Python for command line tools: the ups and downs of Mercurial's language of choice with Pierre-Yves David

In 2005, Matt Mackall picked Python to implement a new version control system: Mercurial. Ten years later, the project is a success! Thanks to python? Lets see what shinning advantages met us and what issues we, developers, had to work around. We'll also take a detour to the place were python outcrop to the users, the extensions system.

In 2005, Matt Mackall picked Python to implement a new version control system: Mercurial. Ten years later, the project is a success! Thanks to python?

In this Talk, we'll go over on the advantages of Python that helped the project both in its early life when so much feature needs to be implemented, but also nowaday when major companies like Facebook bet on Mercurial for scaling. We'll also point at the drawback of choosing python and how some work-arounds had to be found. Finally, we'll look at how the choice of python have an impact on the user too with a demonstration of the extensions system.