[webkit-dev] Moving to Git?

[Gavin Barraclough]

On Mar 9, 2012, at 12:30 PM, Mark Rowe wrote:

> What you'll find is that the vast majority of SVN users are simply not participating in this email thread. You'll also find that many people that use git-svn are happy enough with the status quo since it gives those who chose to use it most of the benefits of a pure Git setup without forcing it on others.
> 
> In my opinion a substantial benefit needs to be demonstrated in order to convince the existing SVN users, many of which are substantial long-term contributors to the project, that it's worth it to them to relearn how to contribute to WebKit. And I do feel that SVN users need to want to switch to Git in order for it to be worth pursuing such a switch. As a heavy Git user myself I've not seen any arguments in this thread that would be convincing to someone not already familiar with Git.

I think Mark makes a couple of very good points here.

As an svn user, I'm under no illusion about the fact that git is clearly a more powerful tool, and that it's important that we support git access for contributors who need it.  However I find that personally I work much more efficiently in svn – my needs are modest and I find git overly complex for my very simple requirements.  I would be happy to give greater consideration to moving to git if it would significantly benefit either me or the project as a whole for me to do so.

Reading through this thread, it's not obvious to me that accommodating both svn and git users is a huge burden on the project.  I hope this is the case, because I have to say, the status quo seems pretty good (which isn't to say there aren't ways we could improve our processes – there are a few good suggestions in this thread).  It seems beneficial to the project to accommodate the needs of a wide range of contributors as well as we reasonable can, and it seems that we are in a fortunate position with regard to version control where we are already doing so very well.  I would hope this would only change if there were good reason to do so.

cheers,
G.

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