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[Python-Dev] Hg: inter-branch workflow

Éric Araujo merwok at netwok.org
Wed Mar 23 02:01:13 CET 2011 
>>> I'm curious: what are the benefits of the Mercurial model?
>> Simplicity.
> 
> That's an amusing response, after reading hundreds of emails on this 
> list
I think the great number of messages is caused by incomplete learning,
confusion caused by familiarity with other tools, FUD and anxiety.

Just in case my position is not clear: I have a lot of sympathy for
people who struggle with the new tool and workflow and do try to help.

> about 5-12 step sequences of commands required to perform one operation.
Committing, merging and sharing are not one operation.

> So I must ask: where is the simplicity manifested?
I used simplicity in its strict (or scientific, if this speaks to you)
meaning: not complex, not many-sided.  Having one thing (a notion of an
unnamed branch) instead of two things (a notion of trunk and a notion of
side branch) is by definition simpler.

I often describe Mercurial’s simplicity (or chosen stupidity) as the
reason for its robustness and consistency.  (For example, the frowning
upon history rewriting, or the absence of octopus merging.)

That said, I cannot learn Mercurial for you, not force you to read the
devguide.  I would advise you to learn Mercurial with one of the many
available resources (http://hginit.com/,
http://mercurial.aragost.com/kick-start/), proceed to the devguide,
clone https://bitbucket.org/mirror/cpython and start fixing things in
http.server (and thanks in advance for that work!).

Regards
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