ESR Switches To Threadripper But His GCC SVN-To-Git Conversion Could Still Take Months

[Azpegath]

My guess is that there's "about a 65% chance" it could be done by the time The Hurd is done.

[mlau]

Also, please don't assign him any more important blocking tasks.

This is probably to keep him from interfering in other more important tasks: He has his critical-looking task to work on an feel important about again, while the other developers can work on other stuff without ESR stepping on their toes.
To me this looks like a babysitter-task so the grownups can work.

[yoshi314]

what is wrong with svn-fast-export that makes it unsuitable for this task?

i've migrated some huge repositories from svn to git using it and it took no longer than a few hours.

[moilami]

These comments clearly show that youths do not respect elders anymore

[Jabberwocky]

These comments clearly show that youths do not respect elders anymore

Careful your agest commit might trigger people.

[birdie]

I wonder why neither Google, nor Amazon want to help - they have servers with literally terabytes of RAM. They could have easily rented something to Eric for a week and be done with conversion.

[Terrablit]

These comments clearly show that youths do not respect elders anymore

ESR is certainly older, but he's not my elder. We share nothing except a passion for computers, and that's not enough to make me suck up to him. It's not even an age thing. I've had several co-workers ESR's age with whom I get along swimmingly. I've respectfully sat through a lot of COBOL war stories. He's just nowhere near matching his hype. I've watched him for years, and my mild celebrity respect has dwindled to moderate celebrity contempt.

His contributions are resoundingly minor. He was quite good at being around famous people and events. He wrote some pretentious articles when he was younger and contributed some code. If he wanted veneration for that, he could have stayed out of things and had nominal respect funneled his way for years. Instead, he tried to stay relevant and has effectively been promoted to the level of his incompetence.

It'd be fine if he just did what he could. But no, he's faking expertise and is a drain on the community. Being honest about being over your head is fine. There's no shame in having limits. Same with admitting that you're not good at some languages. But that's not ESR. ESR has to inflate the problem to make his efforts look herculean and his mistakes trivial. Also he likes to be racist and bigoted, and tries to pretend to be a badass. It's not relevant to the current problem, but it does add a lot of context to the underlying issue. Which is that ESR's ego is writing checks his ability can't cash.

It's like when elderly people continue to drive even when doing so is unsafe. Letting go of independence and control is really hard, and it's a drastic change for some. But when you're slow to react and have bad vision, the safety of other drivers on the road trumps your pressing need to go to a restaurant buffet on Sunday afternoons. All the respect in the world isn't going to convince me to let them legally hop in the car and endanger others. It's a different age for everyone, but it always comes in the end. ESR either needs to come to terms with his current abilities and stop overextending himself or get off the damn road.

[Terrablit]

I wonder why neither Google, nor Amazon want to help - they have servers with literally terabytes of RAM. They could have easily rented something to Eric for a week and be done with conversion.

People offered to sponsor cloud hours for him, but he wasn't interested. ESR wants to do things his way.

[Althorion]

what is wrong with svn-fast-export that makes it unsuitable for this task?

i've migrated some huge repositories from svn to git using it and it took no longer than a few hours.

He claims that it only handles linear history, doesn’t handle tags nor svn:ignore properties, is badly documented and abandoned.

[birdie]

People offered to sponsor cloud hours for him, but he wasn't interested. ESR wants to do things his way.

That's called ... well, I have no polite words for that.