Re: Switch Repository to Git

* David ???Bombe??? Roden <[email protected]> [2008-06-30 00:31:03]:

> Hey folks,
> 
> I have been looking at and working with Git for the last four or five weeks 
> and I must say that I???m very impressed by it. It???s easy to use,

We must have different definitions of the word "easy" :)

> it???s extremely powerful,

granted

> it enables developers to perform the most tedious tasks 
> in a very short time and in general simply wipes the floor with 
> subversion. :)
> 

Here I don't agree; they are targetting a different audience, hence they
provide a different set of functionnalities... and have different problems.

> It is possible to import subversion repositories into Git, keeping the 
> complete history and even branches, and it???s even possible to commit changes 
> made in a local repository back to subversion; I just tested that tonight 
> when I fixed nextgens??? backport of toad???s BucketChainBucket???it even made 
> finding the bug simple.
> 

We all agree that that merging things from branches back and forth is not
easy with svn 1.4... but it will be easier when we will upgrade to a
merge-tracking enabled version.

> Git repositories can be served by a special git-daemon or by a normal, 
> run-off-the-mill HTTP server without any special modules. No DAV, no CGI, no 
> nothing, just plain HTTP.
> 
> I???d suggest that we move to Git rather sooner than later;

What feature does it have we would *need* ?
Since 0.7 started we had something like 6 branches... Even though I agree
that the merging tool is under-optimized, I think we can live with it.

First of all I am not convinced that we want to use a DSCM... and as for
the choice of GIT, well, I don't think it's appropriate in our usecase
for the following reasons:
	- Its user interface sucks (even the git guys acknowledge that and
	  that's why they developped many front-ends to git like cogito)
	- Its documentation is inexistent
	- Its integration to IDEs sucks
	- Its not cross-platform, contrary to SVN
	- As far as I know it's not possible to integrate it with mantis, nor
	  to auto-link svn revision numbers filled into tickets to commit
	  identifiers git uses.
	- It's a DSCM ... DSCMs concepts are more complicated to apprehend
	  than SCMs concepts for the average guy; We try to lower the fence
	  the average contributor has to pass in order to be able to
	  contribute; not to higher it.
	- DSCMs encourage forking; that's definitly not something we want to
	  do.

To be fair, on the assets side we have:
	- makes anonymous development easier (but we didn't have many anon.
	  contributors... and I doubt it's related to the tools)
	- Working copies are smaller as they aren't per-branch.
	- It's probably faster than SVN when you work locally and don't push
	  your changes.

> most of the trouble 
> we had with bug #2440 (which resulted from the faulty backport) would never 
> have occured in the first place with Git. (Sure, of course you can make 
> changes in the wrong branch but Git will happily apply a commit from one 
> branch to another so the backport could have been done in two minutes.)
> 

Well, I was aware it was broken but didn't take the time to fix it before I
left...

> Anybody in favor? Anybody opposed?
> 

I'm opposed but I guess you already know it if you read that email up to
here :)

Florent