Comments inline...
Le 05/08/2017 à 09:22, Brian Burch a écrit :
On 04/08/17 18:16, Emmanuel Lécharny wrote:
Hi guys,
"It was the best *of* times, it was the worst *of* times" (Dickens)
it's a pretty big change : switching away from SVN to git. We are using
svn from the very beginning, so to speak 14 years, and it's probablu
time to use a more efficient and modern VCC system. To most of you, that
should be a no brainer, and we already have a few sub-projects using git
at Diectory (Fortress, kerby).
However, I think it's important to get this vote out, as it's gong to
impact the project as a whole.
Note that it will just be for teh API atm, but the other projects will
most certainly migrate sooner or later (ApacheDS, Studio, Mavibot and
teh site)
I'm just a dinosaur!
Ah ! And you are not alone :-) Born in 1964, I can tell you that I'm
closer to the end of my carrer than the opposite...
Some of my dormant projects are still held on CVS (to retain the
history)! I made the switch to SVN for those projects which required
it and adapted my methods to suit. As time went by I began to
appreciate the value in the weaknesses of CVS which were addressed by
SVN. I am comfortable with SVN, warts and all...
When I was a student, working on MS-DOS machines, we didn't have access
to any VCS. When I started to work I faced SCCS
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_Code_Control_System) and my first
internship was about creating a shells script based interface that make
it transparent for users : operations like 'edit <file>' were pulling
the latest version of teh file, and 'save <file>' was pushing it back to
the repo. It was in 1988...
Then I switched to Microsoft SourceSafe (a huge improvement !), moved
back to Clear Case (a clear regression, up to a point we needed a
dedicated person to merge the changes :/). Then I switched to CVS, which
was OK, but asI was also working in Java and specifically with IBM
VisualAge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_VisualAge) - which aged no
so well... - that included a VCS (that saved us many times). Except that
sharing the changes in the team wasn't that easy.
In 2005, when I started working on Directory, it was already using SVN
(The ASF migrated from CVS to SVN around 2003,AFAICT). A huge plus
compared to CVS especially when it comes to manage branches ( I hated so
much the way branches were managed in CVS :/).
SVN was not perfect, and in old versions, managing branches and merging
was quite a nightmare ! It improves with the years, and especially the
plugins for the IDE we are using (Eclipse), but we were years before
being able to commit from teh IDE (during a couple of years we were
mostly committing from the command line).
So SVN is now stable, well known by people working on this project for
more than a decade. But... (see later comments)
Of course, I've had to work with GIT when a project has converted, and
I've heard all the advocates many times before. It must be my
fossilised brain making me still uncomfortable with GIT - it just
feels "back to front" to me. In my mind, it feels natural to have an
authoritative source and replicate it into my own "sandbox" to "play"
with.
Actually, we do have a authoritative source at The ASF : the code is
stored on an ASF machine, because The ASF is taking responsability to
provide code to the public.
All in all, the way The ASF uses git is a bit different to what other
organisations are used to. I also have to say that The ASF was quite
relictant to use Git for good - and bad - reasons. Nowadays, I would say
that 75% of the ASF projects are using GIT, and I don't know of ny new
projects using SVN today.
Anyway, I know your feelings : I'm myself so used with SVN that
everytime I have to switch to git - and all the cryptic command lines
options - it's a bit of a pain. OTOH, I realized that I have to work
more and more with git those days, and it's now a pain to have to switch
frm git to SVN and from SVN to git :/ And this is the whole idea :
getting rid of this mental charge.
I've noticed all the enthusiastic +1's for this vote, so I am resigned
to having to adapt to yet another GIT project. All I can ask is that
someone writes a helpful wiki page for those developers who want to
hit the ground running once the trunk has migrated. Will there be any
gotchas associated with the transitional period?
Yes, we will need to write down a page about the migration. And there
will be gotchas :
- SVN ignores will have to be converted to .gitignore
- our build is based on externals and I'm no sure we can have the same
in git. OTOH, I'm not sure it makes sense anymore t use externals...
- PRs will have to be handled, while we were mostly asking people to
attach a diff to a JIRA when they wanted to propose a patch.
So :
[ ] +1 : switch Apache LDAP API to git
[ ] +/-0 : I don't mind
[ ] -1 : Keep going with SVN
-1 is not a veto, feel free to speak your mind. The idea is to be sure
we are all on the same page here : I don't feel compelled to switch, but
I do think it would make it easier for us to work on the project, and
for external users to push PRs.
Thanks for being so diplomatic, Emmanuel. With your "encouragement", I
am inclined to vote -1...
However, if someone can explain how the peculiar SVN structure of the
project would be improved by migration to GIT - I mean having to
checkout the code and wiki sources under different urls and sandboxes,
then I would be happy to vote +1.
As I said we are using externals, which allows you to checkout many
projects in one shot doing :
svn co http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/directory/trunks
which pulls apacheds, studio, shared, project, kerberos-client,
checkstyle-configuration, junit-addons, apacheds-manuals,
ldap-api-manuals, jdbm, mavibot, skin and docker.
Out of those projects, a few might die sooner or later :
apacheds-manuals, ldap-api-manuals and jdbm.
Otherwise, git has submodules that pretty much mimic svn:externals.
Beside that, we already have a decent git support in most of the IDE,
Git is way faster when it comes to commit huge changes, and makes it
simpler to merge changes when some directory or files are moved around -
SVN tree merge nightmare anyone ? ;-) -.
I am pleased to see everyone voting so politely!
Why would we behave differently ? I know that Game Of Throne 7 is out,
but that's better on a TV set than in real life ;-)
Have a nice week-end !
