Freedesktop.org Migration/Git

[Kevin Kubasik <kevin kubasik net>]

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I know Joe mentioned this is passing some months ago, but with the
planned gnome svn migration (that is currently stumbling on some of
beagle) and a recent post I read on Gnome planet
http://keithp.com/blog/Repository_Formats_Matter.html
I've been thinking about bringing this up for serious discussion.

First let me say I'm really not set either way, for or against a switch,
I'm undecided at the moment, but just wanted to get my thoughts out in
an e-mail and see what everyone else thinks.

1) Enforce Desktop-neutral position. If we do migrate to
freedesktop.org, we really do emphasize that the beagle daemon is
desktop neutral, we could even talk to the kerry folk about migrating
their work to the official beagle repo, and move beagle-search into its
own repo. Giving us 3 repos (daemon, gtk interface, qt interface) not a
bad statement to make with beagle gaining more consideration from major
distros as a default package.

2) Distributed SCM. Migration to fdo means migrating to git, which may
be a detriment, but to me it seems like a major plus. Over the past
month an a half or so beagle has seen increasingly decentralzied/branch
based development. I know I have 3 local bzr branches with projects I'm
working on, dBera has the beagle-cutting-edge branch, and Joe is working
in the distributed index branch. Maybe its time we embrace this style of
development and look at a distributed SCM. Migration is not a big issue
as git can import from cvs fairly seamlessly (I tried it on our repo, no
errors, some mis-timestamped log messages due to server clock skew, but
all said and done, a clean import.)

3) Timing. I'm sure ross would have issue if we asked that the beagle
module in cvs be archived and not migrated to svn. We don't really use
many gnome specific services (like live.gnome.org) except for ftp, which
 is extremely simple to switch to fdo. The largest hitch would be
account setup for those of us that have gnome cvs write access, but no
account at fdo.

4) Mailing List Migration. Maybe well finally create a beagle-devel
mailing list and revert dashboard-hackers to dashboard development? Just
a thought, it would take some time to update all the places its
mentioned, but it feels like it might be time ;)

5) Pain In The Ass. Simply put, moving/migrating all this stuff will be
a pain in the ass, and may not justify the smaller (mostly
image/developer convenience based) advantages that we would gain. Moving
means a few days where development slows or halts, people may have
problems getting in touch with us, etc etc. To some extent I can
alleviate part of this if we did the migration some time this week
(highly unlikely) or one of the first 2 weeks of January when I am out
of classes and could be available for a whole day or 2 to coordinate al
of the migration efforts but still, its a major pain.

6) Bug system. We currently use the Gnome Bugzilla, I don't know a lot
about bugzilla migrations and the like, but it seems like we would
probably be starting fresh with the fdo bugzilla, and would either have
to manually migrate or lose a lot of info in the gnome bugzilla, another
downer.

7) Loss of Gnome Community etc. Gnome is pretty cool, I love Gnome, I
love Gnome hackers, I love gnome infrastructure, I love most things
about Gnome. If we move, we lose a lot of that Gnome coolness. I don't
have a much better way to quantify/describe it, but it sucks to lose it.


Obviously this isn't a comprehensive or organized list, but its just a
between-exam brainfart that I had and felt like sharing when I saw the
renewed Gnome SVN Migration plans (were looking at a dec 29th cutoff).
Please feel free to contribute ideas, thoughts or rampant flaming
opinions, I take none of this personally its just a thought.


Cheers,
Kevin Kubasik
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