On Mon, Aug 6, 2018 at 12:57 PM <fossil-users-requ...@lists.fossil-scm.org> wrote:
> Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2018 11:18:09 -0500 > From: Artur Shepilko <nomadb...@gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [fossil-users] Why no EXE+DLL like SQLite? > Message-ID: > > How would you want to use such a GUI? > I mean practically what is a non-programmer user workflow that > involves a VCS interaction via GUI? > ... > So my feeling is that no amount of explanation or "instructions" would > convert such users to make use of a VCS in any form, GUI or not. VCS > would be perceived as an additional and annoying hoop to jump through. > > So I wonder, how do you see your use-cases and GUI VCS workflow? > In the case of my employer, transitioning away from a hugely expensive (as in a large annual license fee) to SVN. Most of the non-programmers like it much more than the old system. Partly because because a set of documents could be identified by project code and SVN revision number, instead of a list of document numbers and revision numbers. with the help of a Power Shell script from IT, each user has, on their PC, a workspace for each project they are working on. Then they use TortoiseSVN to (mostly) commit changes to their documents, sometimes to fetch older versions. Many of the users are now making almost daily commits, not just just when making official releases of their documents. Unfortunately, fossil - and other DVCSs - use less friendly version IDs than the revision numbers SVN uses. But, I suspect that, after using the old system, the non-programmers would have welcomed Fossil, even with its unfriendly version IDs - except for the lack of a GUI front end to add, commit and update the user's workspace. I never tried Sharp Fossil, but Fuel was a very clunky GUI. I think non-programmers would be unwilling to put up with it. And I seriously doubt it's a project corporate IT departments would be willing to take on. (The Power Shell script I mentioned is very simple. It presents the user with a folder-and-file style interface to select a project, then creates a folder in the user's projects folder and does a SVN checkout into that folder. I suspect most corporate IT directors would choose SVN+TortoiseSVN for a document management system for non-programmers, as an alternative to the kind document management system my employer used to use. If they did choose a DVCS, then I think it would be Mercurial+TortoiseHg or git+Tortoisegit, before they'd consider Fossil. (As I've mentioned before, my fellow programmers and I, use Fossil for our day-to-day VCS needs and only use SVN for official releases. We used to use SVN for day-to-day use, but then the "process gurus" decided to link SVN to an issue tracking system that makes every commit a 2 hour (or more) task. We use Fossil "under the radar" and the process gurus seem to think that our reduced use of SVN is a good thing, so haven't asked why we are using it less.)
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