[webkit-dev] Moving to Git?

[Ashod Nakashian]

----- Original Message -----

> From: Geoffrey Garen <ggaren at apple.com>
> To: Ashod Nakashian <ashodnakashian at yahoo.com>
> Cc: David Barr <davidbarr at google.com>; Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org>; WebKit Development <webkit-dev at lists.webkit.org>
> Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2012 2:58 AM
> Subject: Re: [webkit-dev] Moving to Git?
> 
> I'm starting to see a mathematical relationship between
> (a) Volume of contribution to the WebKit OpenSource Project
> (b) Volume of advocacy for removing svn support from the WebKit OpenSource 
> Project
> 
> The relationship seems to be of the inverse variety.
> 
> In your case, Ashod:
> 
> Source> find . -name ChangeLog\* | xargs grep "Nakashian" | wc 
> -l
>        2
> 

I'm sorry if I don't see why this is a good argument. Is there a prerequisite for resurrecting a healthy discussion on a topic that is obviously of interest to many active contributes that I'm not aware of?

After all, what prompted me to raise this issue is because some svn scripts are outdated and before fixing them I thought may be there wasn't much use for them in the first place (otherwise, someone with a bigger contribution volume would certainly have noticed and fixed them sooner than me).

-Ash

> Geoff
> 
> On Mar 9, 2012, at 7:14 AM, Ashod Nakashian wrote:
> 
>>  I think if we address the main issues raised by the svn users, the current 
> consensus (if representative) seems to point towards an overwhelming support 
> (and demand?) for git over svn. On that point it's reasonable to say that 
> we're heading towards option #1 or #2 of Maciej. As such, I'm humbly 
> proposing the following (hopefully without getting ahead of myself):
>> 
>>  A) Address as many of the issues raised by the svn users and streamline 
> their use-cases in the current scripts on top of git that we can (this would 
> leave generation numbers out of scope as it's a git issue, although we can 
> push that on git's mail-list). Address any current issues that 
> (advanced/seasoned) git users find wanting/missing to have a solid system that 
> capitalizes on the powers of git as much as possible.
>> 
>>  B) Plan a phase-out schedule for svn repo, servers and scripts and 
> mainlining git (this needs input from ops and those who can assess the overhead 
> involved - something I'm ignorant of). Offer the option of having svn mirror 
> (however realistic that is, I can't tell) keeping in mind the overhead of 
> maintaining the svn scripts.
>> 
>>  If we don't do anything we'll be supporting both systems, scripts, 
> docs etc. with little advantage but having the choice of both systems 
> (status-quo). If we start moving towards git I think we'll end up with the 
> reverse situation than what we have now (git mainline, svn mirror) and, assuming 
> the majority use git and there are more benefits to git over svn, then WebKit 
> will benefit more that way than the case is now. However, having said that, 
> something tells me the remaining svn users will probably switch to git sooner 
> rather than later.
>> 
>>  (Disclaimer: I enjoy svn as much as the next guy, but I think git offers 
> enough power to justify the overhead of learning/adapting/migrating to it. In 
> addition, as many pointed out, no one has to use all the power features and the 
> svn-equivalent day-to-day ones can be automated transparently by current (and 
> new) scripts.)
>> 
>>  -Ash
>