[gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: better policy for ChageLogs

[Duncan]

Peter Volkov posted on Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:09:04 +0400 as excerpted:

>> One of the huge benefits in using git would be really fast emerge
>> --syncs. Not having some kind of system for migrating users to git
>> seems like a lot of the benefits are lost.
>
> Is git faster then rsync? I've never done any checks but it'll be
> surprising if it will.

That's a question that has come up before.  I don't know the answer...

> Another useful feature of rsync is --exclude that
> allows some categories to be excluded (for size and speed efficiency),
> e.g. my servers don't need kde-* and games-*.

Git has similar options in the form of the .git/info/exclude file at the 
(local) repository level, and .gitignore files at the subdir level (these 
are normally synced with the repo but of course can be excluded locally by 
the above repository level file, if desired).

Patterns similar to those used by rsync --exclude are even supported. =:^)

See also the git config core.excludefile command (git-config (1) manpage) 
and the gitignore (5) manpage.

> Also taking into account
> that we use portage tree on embedded devices where again both size and
> speed really matters it looks like the answer on your question is
> "permanently".

With shallow checkouts, the size aspect is somewhat mitigated.  However, 
it may be that there'd be three user sync options, adding git, to the 
current two (rsync and webrsync).

IMO it'd be a real shame to not make the git sync option available to the 
user, as a number of projects have already discovered that real community 
involvement at the GOOD bug report and above level can increase 
dramatically after a switch to git, due to the vastly increased 
accessibility and ease of use of tools such as git bisect.

But the *REAL* decison on whether git is ultimately made available at the 
user level or not will probably be infra's to make, based not on the 
above, but on the very practical question of whether Gentoo's mirror 
infrastructure can actually handle the git-pull load.  After all, that's 
said to be the reason the CVS tree isn't made directly available to 
ordinary users today.  Git should be better than CVS in that regard, but 
will it be good /enough/ as compared to the resources demanded by rsync, 
or not?  That I don't know, tho I suspect infra and/or the git upgrade 
project already has a reasonably educated opinion on the matter.

Of course, someone like Google donating enough hardware and bandwidth to 
"make it happen", based on, say, their use of Gentoo as a basis for 
ChromeOS, thus making a healthy Gentoo good for them too, might help infra 
with its decision.  One can hope. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman