Re: Can we improve things?

[Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org>]

On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 11:57:19AM +0300, Zeeshan Ali wrote:
>    About the svn access, all centralized VCS's are meant for
> dictatorships. If the gnome foundation really wants to improve the
> situation, i recommend moving to git or some other non-distributed VCS
> instead of brain-dead centralized svn for the following reason:

This will take 12x longer than fixing the problem. We'll end up with a
workaround (as someone still finally has to commit). Finally, people can
already use a D-SCM together with SVN (git/bzr/.. support SVN). So if
D-SCM would solve things, there wouldn't be an issue currently.

> 1. Developers can clone the main repo and the maintainers (people with
> write-access) can just pull from their cloned repos. This way a
> developer won't really need write access and he'll just keep on
> committing his changes to his repo and inform the maintainer(s) about
> his newest cool changes and the maintainer(s) can pull those changes
> if they like/need them.

I call that a workaround. The problem is the access to the main repos.
If the maintainer doesn't pull from every developer you end up with the
same problem. At one point someone needs to do something (give access to
something / pull).

> 2. #1 is a generic advantage of using a non-distributed VCS but the
> reason i would go for git is speed: it's amazingly super fast in all
> it's operations and will save a lot of precious developer time.

You are ignoring the drawbacks and that it won't solve this issue.

I am all for D-SCM, but it is not a hammer.

> 3. No need to maintain two levels of changelog.

That is not true. The ChangeLog requirement has been discussed before.
Suggest to read the archives for that discussion (here / d-d-l).

>   So far the only arguments against git had been the sucky UI but that
> is no more true of git 1.5. For details on why a good and
> self-respecting developer wouldn't ever consider using svn over git,
> you have to watch this presentation by Linus:
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2199332044603874737 .

Last time I watched this it only talked about the benefits of a
distributed SCM vs non-distributed SCM. Further, the style of presenting
is very flame-ish. It only serves as advocacy to perhaps try some other
D-SCM.

Btw, generalising my arguments against git to 'sucky UI' is
a misrepresentation. Suggest to move this to another thread however.

-- 
Regards,
Olav