Subject: Re: VCS comparison table

From: Charles Duffy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:58:09 -0500

Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> So, the wonderful upside of plugins you described here are actually the 
> reason I will never, _never_ use bzr with plugins.
> 

I presume that for this reason you will also never, _never_ use a 
non-mainline branch of git -- even if its actual code only touches UI 
enhancements or something similarly non-core -- because third-party 
branches have the ability, in theory, to make changes to the core of the 
revision control system. And that you will never, _never_ use 
third-party wrappers because they might play LD_PRELOAD tricks. Or run 
any software with root privileges you haven't personally written. Or...

Sean's point that plugins are a comparatively minor win made inexpensive 
on account of bzr's use of Python is reasonable (though we may choose to 
differ on what level of value we attach to the utility). The claim that 
an extensibility mechanism should be rejected wholesale on account of 
being excessively powerful, on the other hand, is just silly.

(If you couldn't write a plugin that *didn't* touch the core, this would 
be a different story. This is, however, very much not the case).