No subject

and less geeky provincialism (cf. mbp's "but I *like* to watch das
Blinkenlights" response to my suggestion that average transfer rates
are more informative than instantaneous ones).

 > This does seem to be a problem; I've never (mostly for lack of a
 > dead-simple method) figured out how to set up a Bazaar smart server.
 > 
 > Yet simultaneously you're also saying that people need to "get used to"
 > the situation where Savannah is not running anything later than an
 > early-2008 version of Bazaar. Are you proposing that this can this be
 > addressed retroactively in Bazaar 1.5?

No, I'm suggesting that maybe somebody ought to (1) package a
dead-simple method for setting up the smart server for the general
audience, and (2) look into the alleged security issues mentioned by
Sylvain Beuclair in http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?107077, and see
if there's some way to provide some support for a Savannah transition.

 > I have a lot of sympathy with all of this, and share your
 > frustration with the bad PR.  Against that, though, in the time
 > since the Python developers began their VCS deliberations, I've
 > seen great strides made in Bazaar's behaviour and in the
 > documentation.

Sure, but the progress has been uneven, and a lot of dVCS-naive people
seem to have great trouble following the Bzr documentation.

 > The situation seems significantly improved, *if* those efforts at
 > improvement can actually be taken advantage of. Sticking with
 > Bazaar 1.5 on Savannah isn't going to make many Emacs developers
 > happy; it seems you agree.
 > 
 > No doubt more can be done. What specifically are you proposing
 > needs to be done, and by whom?

The sticking point for bzr+ssh on Savannah is the alleged security
issue, and the lack of interest.  Bazaar devs can help by researching
that, and providing authoritative technical backup to the users who
are asking for bzr+ssh.

"Lack of interest" is something that RMS can best remedy (because of
the bootstrapping problem "low interest -> poor infrastructure -> slow
growth in interest", only RMS can get a quick change of attitude on
the part of savannah-hackers -- even the "Anointed and Crowned Emacs
Maintainer" seems to have insufficient stature :-).  I hope (and
expect) that Stefan is working on RMS offline.