Distributed version control (Was: bug updating a bug in your issue tracker)

Vladimir G. Ivanovic writes: > on 01/01/2009 01:06 AM Stephen J. Turnbull said the following: > > Vladimir G. Ivanovic writes: > > > > > I wish that the XEmacs development team had chosen a more integrated > > > system, one that included bug tracking, feature tracking, test cases, > > > development work, etc. > > > > Like which one? > > In no particular order and with no claim of being any where near > exhaustive: Rather than responding to individual candidates, let me say that I don't see much integration in any of them, except in a very superficial sense of being able to search the bug/feature/commit databases simultaneously with one query. We have a bug/feature attribute in our issue tracker; which ones have more than that (admittedly on a larger scale)? That's why a number of projects I'd like to consider peers (but I fear I'm overreaching) like Python and Mailman have moved *away* from SourceForge. There are some interesting new options like GitHub and Launchpad, but it's not clear to me how the XEmacs project could take advantage of them. You point to the development model. Well, it's true that our development model would not be acceptable in business, but it's not so different from many other successful medium-sized projects such as Python or Ruby that I can see. It's not clear that it can be otherwise when we depend on volunteer labor. Face it, unlike the "large OSS projects" you mention it's been 15 years since XEmacs has been a mission-critical component of anybody's business model. Introducing things like agile programming or a "no docs, no tests: no commit" policy just aren't affordable. But without a better (which IMO includes "more formal") process, I don't see what integration buys us. So adding the ITS is ad hoc, and needed to be done as cheaply as possible, especially with regard to ongoing maintenance. We also need more activity from the developers we've got, and more developers would be nice too. I don't see how moving to one of the development hosting services would connect to more activity, while it would soak up effort from some of the active people we do have. How would you personally use such a facility to contribute to XEmacs?