Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] Some sync control

[Robin H. Johnson]

On Wed, Jan 17, 2007 at 09:03:59AM +0100, Markus Ullmann wrote:
> >1. Git currently requires you to check out the whole repository.
> >   This includes *all of the history*.
> >2. Git cannot update portions of the repository, it can only update
> >   the entire thing.
>
> This was one of the big reasons. They (and we maybe as well) have people
> there with 56k/64k dialup connections. Checking out the whole thing
> would take ages.
See lower down in the GLEP where it states that upstream are working on
it, and such features would be completed sooner is Gentoo added some
manpower. I do however personally expect them to be ready by mid-2007
already.

> Second thing was that absolutely none of the scripts would be able to
> handle it and they would have to be rewritten from ground up whereas
> most of them would work with svn if you just change the binary path (or
> symlink it even)
I disagree with this statement. There are several mapping scripts that
provide interfaces for the old CVS commands as close as possible
(exceedingly close actually).

> > The conversion to GIT from CVS was also lengthy
> > (approximately two weeks) althought many projects attempted a switch
> > this summer and tools have improved in speed.
> This one was the third. At the time they tried, the conversion could not
> be suspended, so cvs would have to be taken offline for a really long time.
Upstream has moved beyond this point. If we were to convert to GIT right
now, it is intelligent enough to be able to start the conversion with a
snapshot, and then add the changes between the snapshot being taken, and
the final point after the initial conversion is complete.

> And the last thing was the idea about distribution. There is one
> "centrally" maintained tree and people commit to it all day. So the
> chance of getting conflicts in pushes if one is on tour for three days
> would be very likely and so the distributed part of the VCs wouldn't be
> helpful.
I refute this statement. You are no more or less likely to get conflicts
than with CVS (ignoring that fact that GIT has smarter merge
algorithms). If you do a CVS checkout, go away for 3 days, and then try
to commit, CVS will require you to update and resolve checkouts before
accepting your commit. GIT is no different, except that you can at least
have multiple revisions of your changes locally while working on them.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux Developer
E-Mail     : robbat2@g.o
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85