Jesse Keating wrote:
Have you ever found yourself needing to do any of those things within the context of our Package VCS?
I personally, as a packager, do not care whether we stay with CVS or move to another "more better" system. My packaging work flow for the most part is satisifed with CVS. But also keep in mind that much of the current package workflow has been defined by the limitations of CVS. Our current faux-branching scheme was in part done because of CVS, for example.
All that aside, I do strongly believe that Fedora is supposed to be the "leading edge" distribution. And this distinction goes beyond what users see into what the behind-the-scenes people see. At least it should, in my opinion. Fedora has been doing a great job in positioning itself to be leading the pack in terms of the tools we use, such as with koji, bodhi, and smolt. They are best in class, I'd say.
Then, there's CVS. Even if we can't agree on whether to switch to git vs hg vs svn vs bzr, we can all agree that CVS... well, sucks. Not so leading edge.
Does this matter? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the people who are looking for an excuse to not contribute to Fedora can use CVS as a reason for now. Maybe they'd find some other reason if we moved away from CVS. But maybe there are people who are looking for the bleeding edge distro to contribute to. CVS might be the thing that shuns them away from Fedora. Maybe other distros start marketing themselves as more bleeding edge than Fedora because they use a VCS not from the dark ages, and maybe they eventually move to better tools comparable to ours.
Returning to your original question, which I'll paraphrase as "what do we gain by moving away from CVS?" Not much. A small number of users will take advantage of the features that the new VCS gives them.
But if we ask "what do we lose by not moving away from CVS?" then I think the answer is that we lose the ability to claim we are leading edge, and we may potentially lose more than that in the long run.
The cries might not be loud right now. But they will get louder over time as CVS usage becomes more equated with the Flintstones. And I believe that at some point, it can be a deciding criterion in which distribution people will contribute their spare time on. People can be religiously petty that way, for better or for worse.
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