Re: Git vs SVN (was: Can we improve things?)

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

On Fri, 2007-09-07 at 22:35 -0400, Kevin Kubasik wrote:
[...]
> 3) git-svn is an acceptable and stable program, while we should not
> base a system off of it, asking that developers do use it is not out
> of the question.

This is not true.  I'm a git lover, but tried git-svn and couldn't make
it work for me.  Doesn't work with glib because of the svn:external
directory and even with pango I gave up as switching between branches
and even committing+pushing is not as easy as I hoped.

[...]
> 2) Even with the addition of git.gnome.org, at this point, Subversion
> remains the final and master copy of all Gnome source. Individual
> projects are free to branch and merge and frolic as they please, but
> it is imperative that the Subversion trunk remain the tip of active
> development. Be that through the forwarding of patches through git
> systems, or as it always has taken place. However, new projects are
> asked to use git, and simply treat Subversion as the master branch,
> where all changes are eventually pushed at release time.

This will just waste more maintainer time.


> 3) At this point, if all has gone well, we allow evangelist project
> maintainers to move to git exclusively if they so desire, this will
> help us asses the migration tools and times for a realistic assessment
> of the next step.

Fair enough.

[...]
> * Doesn't address the translators learning new software component. -
> Yes, it does, the beauty of forcing the SVN repos to stay active,
> while using them with git is that as long as the git->svn action only
> involves one git branch and one subversion branch, things are neat and
> cheery. Now using git to manage branches in subversion is just plain
> stupid, but translators could continue to work in the old system as
> long as the developers remember to occasionally fetch any changes.
> This reflects a serious change in mentality that DRCS' can enable.
> Merging is not the devil, its cheap, easy, reliable, clean, and part
> of distributed development.

If translators are getting in the way of hackers using their best tools,
we should find how to fix it.  I see two ways:

  - Provide online tools for translation such that those who don't want
to deal with git/svn/... can use it for all their needs.

  - Move translations out of modules into a new module dedicated to
translations of all GNOME modules.  Fixes many build-broken issues but
has many more issues.

-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
 Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
        -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759