[webkit-dev] Idea for comments: Using Git to manage some WebKit platform ports

[Ryan Leavengood]

Hello all,

I have recently begun to use Git in earnest and after reading various
things and starting to understand how it works I had an idea: I could
manage my Haiku WebKit port using Git without ever having my code in
the "real" WebKit SVN repo. The basic idea would be I would clone the
current WebKit Git repo, create a branch for my Haiku port, and then
publish that branch for other Haiku developers to use. This branch
would never go back into the main WebKit repo. Why would I want to do
this? Here is what I am thinking:

- The main WebKit repo would have one less bit of platform code that
everyone else has to download, even though only a tiny percentage
would care to use it (as much as I like Haiku at this point it is a
very small platform.)
- It would be almost impossible for other people in the WebKit
community to break the Haiku WebKit build since I (or other Haiku
developers) would control pulling new changes from the main repo and
could ensure we fixed problems before publishing those changes to our
repo.
- It alleviates other WebKit maintainers from having to be concerned
about breaking such a tiny port like ours because of the above point.
- I could freely change my platform code without having to go through
the strict WebKit review and submit process (which is good in general
but maybe too heavyweight for my small port.)

I might also suggest that other smaller ports (*cough* Robert,
*cough*, AROS) could use this too, but obviously that is up to them.

The WebKit site can provide links to these platform specific Git repos
so people can make use of them if they wish.

I would be curious what the WebKit community thinks about this idea. I
know the Qt people have been doing this already to some extent with
their Git repo and I recall this being perceived badly by some. One
point I would like to make is I would intend to submit any purely
WebKit-related fixes back to the main repo (which Git makes
considerably easier than SVN.) So there would not be an issue of
potentially "good stuff" hiding in my repo (part of what the Qt guys
got flak for I believe.)

Regards,
Ryan