[webkit-dev] Should we consider switching to git over svn?

[Brady Eidson]

I think a 100% firm prerequisite is concise, precise, and novice-level  
instructions on exactly how to use git in the context of WebKit  
development.
As someone who has been living on git for a few weeks, I find many of  
the conveniences to be great, and it is obviously very powerful.
But "steep learning curve" is an understatement - more like "throw out  
your CVS and SVN experience, and relearn version control"

The potential is great, but think of the prospective developers who  
are already (sadly) frustrated by the relatively tame learning curve  
of SVN.

~Brady

On Oct 8, 2007, at 9:29 PM, Oliver Hunt wrote:

> In recent weeks/months a number of webkit developers have started  
> using Git for day to day development, and have found it very  
> useful.  Git is yet another revision control system, but unlike  
> RCS's such as cvs and svn it allows local branches and makes merging  
> branches much easier.  In addition to making bracnhes much more  
> manageable, it has a few other advantages:
>  * Speed: Git is much faster than svn (which becomes very valuable  
> on windows,
>  * History: Git's history is much nicer than that of svn, especially  
> with regards to patches submitted by people without commit rights,  
> as it is able to distinguish the author of a patch from the person  
> who committed it.
>  * Collaboration:  It is possible for people to publish their git  
> tree's in a way that allows them to be tracked by others, allowing  
> people to collaborate on bugs and/or features much more easily  
> without actually committing to a central repository.
>
> Unfortunately, git is still not as user friendly as svn, and has a  
> relatively steep learning curve (largely due to it using some  
> similar commands to svn for completely different purposes :-/ )
>
> On the other hand, those of us using git currently have to use the  
> git-svn bridge which, while functional, is somewhat slow.  I think  
> (and i'm hoping others agree) that despite the slightly more complex  
> interface the improved merging, branching, and speed mean that we  
> should seriously consider switching to git as our primary RCS.
>
> Any comments from others are welcome.
>
> --Oliver
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