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Subject: Re: Writable git repositories
From: Upayavira <uv@odoko.co.uk>
To: infrastructure-dev@apache.org
In-Reply-To: <87B8DE64-C150-4EF1-BE16-BA88CB8BB30E@labnotes.org>
References: <7e3605160910090535y328ae41era086662eea5bb6f8@mail.gmail.com>
	 <6384071B-F539-4690-A19B-6AFCEFC7172A@pc-tony.com>
	 <7e3605160910090614m6d9b1081i92451a689ee400be@mail.gmail.com>
	 <2B494B67-7C85-4ECC-8A6A-E0F047FA71B2@pc-tony.com>
	 <87B8DE64-C150-4EF1-BE16-BA88CB8BB30E@labnotes.org>
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Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 22:07:58 +0100
Message-Id: <1255208878.8010.28.camel@urgyen>
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Producing software is what the ASF is about. Where we put the code we
write is kinda important to the ASF.

Our revision control system is therefore the most important piece of
software that we deploy.

Because if this, I'd even wonder whether it is up to infrastructure
alone to decide upon the revision control system, it being so central to
the entire organisation.

The instability that is referred to isn't just in the effort in
converting the repo itself, it is also in getting 3000 committers plus
many contributors to learn a completely different tool, across many
different operating systems and environments, plus all of the addons,
scripts, tools, etc that folks use, and so on.

Maybe a switch to another revision control system is not impossible, but
it is the hardest possible technical change that the foundation could
consider. 

Upayavira


On Fri, 2009-10-09 at 21:25 -0700, Labnotes wrote:
> 
> On Oct 9, 2009, at 6:29 AM, Tony Stevenson <tony@pc-tony.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > On 9 Oct 2009, at 14:14, Kevin Menard wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 8:43 AM, Tony Stevenson <tony@pc-tony.com>  
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Honestly, right now, none.  We only support SVN as the canonical  
> >>> VCS in use
> >>> at the ASF.  If you want to use git-svn, then I'm sorry you'll  
> >>> need to work
> >>> around the mirroring lag.
> >>
> >>
> >> Hi Tony,
> >>
> >> Thanks for the response.
> >>
> >> So, the way I've worked around on the mirroring lag is largely to not
> >> commit anything unless I have 15 min. to sit around and go through a
> >> dcommit/rebase cycle.  Which means I only begrudgingly push stuff
> >> maybe once a week.  The way I've worked around the remote branch  
> >> issue
> >> is to push the code to a non-ASF repo and then bring it back into
> >> trunk when I can get to the git-svn loop.
> >>
> >> Either behavior should probably be considered unacceptable for an ASF
> >> committer and it's not something I'm proud of doing.  But, that's the
> >> reality of the situation.
> >>
> >> By the time I got involved with the ASF, everything had been migrated
> >> over to SVN already, so I didn't get to see the process for that VCS
> >> migration.  I have seen various discussion over the past few years on
> >> the community list about supporting other systems, but no formal
> >> movement to do so.  So, what's the appropriate way to lobby for
> >> supporting additional VCSs?  Obviously what I'd like to do is  
> >> strike a
> >> balance between having the best tools available for a team while not
> >> being a resource drain on the infrastructure team.
> >
> > Kevin,  many folks have already tried to strike up the band, and see  
> > if they can introduce another VCS, predominantly git.  However we,  
> > in the infra team, only want to support on canonical VCS system, at  
> > the moment that is SVN.  The last migration from CVS to SVN was  
> > before my time, but from what I have heard it wasn't without it it's  
> > problems.
> 
> My experience is limited, but the few CVS to SVN conversions I did  
> were tremendously harder than SVN to Git. Hosting SVN was also more  
> admin/IO intensive than Git.
> 
> I don't see how past experience with SVN is any indicator of future  
> life with Git.
> 
> Assaf
> 
> >
> > In all honesty I cannot see a move away from subversion anytime  
> > soon.  If you look at the roadmap for subversion, some of the sought  
> > after features are penned for inclusion.
> >
> > If you use git-svn, you should avoid pointing it as the EU mirror,  
> > as this has to proxy your commit back to the US, then this is  
> > replayed back to the EU mirror this is why you see errors, try  
> > pointing your repo check out at https://svn-master to avoid  
> > succumbing to this issue.
> >
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Tony
> >
> >
> > --------------------------------------------
> > Tony Stevenson
> >
> > tony@pc-tony.com - pctony@apache.org
> > pctony@freenode.net - tony@caret.cam.ac.uk
> >
> > http://blog.pc-tony.com
> >
> > 1024D/51047D66
> > --------------------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >