Should Mailman move to Bazaar?

[Mads Kiilerich]

The Mailman project, led by Barry Warsaw (of Python fame, 
Canonical-employee but fair and unbiased also wrt DVCS), are considering 
moving to Bazaar 
(http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/msg10281.html), 
partly because of the availability of Launchpad hosting
(http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/msg10322.html).

Mercurial has come up as an alternative.

Barry Warsaw asks for more info about Mercurial hosting 
(http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/msg10313.html):
> > http://marc.info/?l=mercurial&m=117753118122082 <http://marc.info/?l=mercurial&m=117753118122082>
>
> That could be very interesting.  I know that was just a couple of  
> weeks ago, but have you heard of an eta for such hosting?

Barry has problems with yasvn2hg 
(http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/msg10317.html). 
Could/would someone offer him help?  - he probably won't ask for help 
before the choice has been made, and if he can't convert then the choice 
probably won't be Mercurial...

Stephen J. Turnbull (from xemacs.org) has problems with the Mercurial 
side of a Tailer-conversion 
(http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/msg10329.html). 


It would be nice if the Mercurial community could help them choosing the 
best DVCS for their need. And it would be even nicer if the system 
running the Mercurial mailing lists was developed using Mercurial.


An observation:

It seems like the biggest problem with Mercurial isn't functionality or 
stability or usability but conversion and hosting.

It could be argued that neither of these areas has to be addressed by 
Mercurial itself, but giving these areas some focus would probably serve 
Mercurial well! The FLOSS community has found out that 
Mercurial-the-product is ready for 1.0 (Congratulations!), but the 
infrastructure isn't ready yet.

It was mentioned on this list that a Mercurial hosting solution might be 
on its way. But a recommended and supported conversion utility is hardly 
on the todo list...

/Mads