Promoting the use of Mercurial; was: Re: gnome dvcs survey results

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Am Mittwoch 07 Januar 2009 07:35:52 schrieb Gabor Grothendieck:
> The size and activity of the community results in a network effect which is
> a certainly key consideration for many.

And sadly that consideration is valid - but still it's in my view not the best 
consideration for getting a stronger free software community, so I thought 
about ways to make that consideration less important to people. 

> Areas that might tip the balance in favor of hg are Windows support
> with TortoiseHg
> and potentially ease of installation and catering to simple usage.
>
> Coordination of releases of Hg and TortoiseHg might help on the Windows
> front.
>
> Installation is your first exposure and first impressions count.  

One additional issue is, though, to get exposure in the first place. 

How do we get the people for whom Mercurial is the far better choice than git 
to take notice of Mercurial? 

Or in PR speech: How do we reach the main target group? 

And which is the best target group for Mercurial (provides more developers and 
advocates and has enough members to give more momentum). 

> A better
> README pointing out all sources of info such as the page on how to install
> without root privs.  Also self-discovery facilities for finding the
> startup files.
> Mine were in three different places on three different machines.
>
> I suspect many more people will only ever employ simple usage with a linear
> history than complex usages yet this is surprisingly difficult.  To move
> around in the history you have to save uncommitted changes,
> then move around, then move back and then unsave uncommitted changes
> when you get back.  This needs to be streamlined.

Would a simple message suffice which says something like 

"You have uncommited changes which need to be committed before you can update 
without losing the changes. Do you want to commit now, or do you want to throw 
away these changes?" 

This in a three button error message with the buttons <Commit> <throw away 
changes> <cancel>

> For larger projects, including the forest extension in base Hg
> (TortoiseHg already does that) might be nice.

One additional point I found: After installation TortoiseHG needs to tell the 
user graphically, that he now has an additional right-click menu. A friend of 
mine fell into that trap and said he didn't find the installed program. 

Maybe a startup-once program could help here. 

Also Qct didn't work for another friend of mine (locked the repo and never let 
go), so I had to reset the config to the standard tool. Sticking to the simple 
dialog and only offering Qct as option would have avoided quite many problems 
for us. The first impression was "damn, the repo's stuck - let's clone it 
again"

Best wishes, 
Arne

PS: I forwarded this message to the TortoiseHG list.  
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