Re: [gentoo-project] Official rsync->git mirror & 'Git mirror' project announcement

[Michał Górny]

Dnia 2015-01-28, o godz. 21:48:37
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@g.o> napisał(a):

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> On 01/26/2015 08:12 PM, Michał Górny wrote:
> > Hello, everyone.
> >
> > I have the pleasure to announce that the official rsync2git mirror
> > is up and running [1] thanks to Sven Wegener. It is updated from
> > rsync every 30 minutes, and can be used both to sync your local
> > Gentoo installs and to submit improvements via pull requests (see
> > README [2] for some details).
> >
> > At the same time, I have established the 'Git Mirror' [3] project
> > which welcomes developers willing to help reviewing the pull
> > requests and helping those improvements reach package maintainers.
> >
> > For users, this means that we now have a fairly efficient syncing
> > method and a pull request-based workflow for submitting fixes. The
> > auto-synced repository can also make proxy-maint workflow easier.
> >
> > For developers, this either means:
> >
> > a. if you want to help us, join the team, watch the pull requests.
> > CC maintainers when appropriate, review, even work towards merging
> > the changes with approval of the maintainers,
> >
> > b. if you want to support git users, just wait till we CC you and
> > then review, help, merge :),
> >
> > c. if you don't want to support git users, just ignore the repo.
> > We'll bother you directly after the changes are reviewed and ready
> > :).
> >
> > [1]:https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo-portage-rsync-mirror
> > [2]:https://github.com/gentoo/gentoo-portage-rsync-mirror#README
> > [3]:https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Git_mirror
> >
> Hi,
>
> First of all let me express my gratitude on what you did! It's a
> really nice effort towards the right direction. However, I feel there
> is a bit of overlap with the proxy-maintainers[1] repository. On the
> readme file you suggest to not commit anything to this git repository
> (not even merge pull requests). So what's the purpose of having the
> pull requests in the first place? I believe, in order to avoid
> confusion, users should use the proxy-maintainers repository for pull
> requests for the packages they maintain. Otherwise, just stick to the
> bugzilla for ebuilds that have developers as maintainers. I believe we
> are running into the risk of having too many places for user
> contributions, and that will make maintenance a nightmare because you
> will have devs taking care of proxy-maint pull requests, and then
> others taking care of the rsync-git mirror pull requests. I believe
> you need to rethink the proposed workflow.
>
> [1] https://github.com/gentoo/proxy-maintainers

I have talked to some of the team members and they expressed interest
in using this repository instead of proxy-maint one. The main advantage
is that the repository is synced to gx86, so users don't have to
copy/sync ebuilds manually to work on them.

The pull request workflow still has advantages, even if you don't use
the github's built-in merge mechanism. Developers can easily pull
the changes to their local repo and test them, and then copy over to
CVS. Plus github provides a simple review workflow with comments
and updates.

As I see it, it's both better for users and developers. More points of
contribution can be a bit confusing but also go towards a more
distributed workflow. If user can help me by contributing to Gentoo, I
don't think we should require him to match our fancy tools but let him
use the tools he finds helpful. And a lot of people find github this
way.

That said, I still think the workflow is easier. Cloning and creating
the pull request is more console-friendly than opening a bug
and attaching few files. Reviews can be more dynamic, and updating
the pull request is much easier than deprecating and attaching new
files. Not to mention downloading and testing those files...

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny