* Holger Berger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-04-07 18:12]: > On 4/8/06, Al Hopper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Fri, 7 Apr 2006, Stephen Hahn wrote: > > > > > > > > Commentary is encouraged. We can start to look at specific > > > SCM-dependent tools next week, unless we are more distant from > > > consensus that I believe... > > > > > > Enjoy the weekend; my thanks to all. > > > > ... snip .... > > > Therefore, we have decided to select Mercurial as the DSCM for > > > OpenSolaris. In the coming time, we hope to work with the Mercurial > > > community to address any issues we may find while integrating > > > Mercurial into the OpenSolaris repository framework and converting > > > existing source bases to use it. > > ..... snip .... > > > > Indeed. Many well-earned Thanks to all who participated in the SCM tool > > selection and to Stephen Hahn for taking the lead role. > > > > I think that Mercurial is the worthy winner of the evaluation. > > May I ask whether this decision is wise? What is the background to > prefer Mercurial over bit keeper, git or subversion?
This decision was made methodically, by defining requirements, executing the tools considered, examining their communities, and soliciting feedback from all members of the community. > My primary concerns about using Mercurial as future basis for > OpenSolaris development are: > - Interoperability: Is there a compatibility layer or bridge to make > the Mercurial repository available to CVS or Subversion clients? Many > tools require either CVS or Subversion and Mercurial seems to provide > no such access. The plan of record for hosting source code is to support Subversion and (now) Mercurial as a per-repository choice, so there's no freeze out for projects that believe they require Subversion for their tools. The primary consolidation driving the distributed SCM choice is ON; there are no tools constraints of the kind you mention upon contributors to ON. > - Portability: On how many platforms does Mercurial actually run? If I > recall it correctly Mercurial required Python(!!) which is a > portability NIGHTMARE. Mercurial was under discussion for other > projects including KDE and was dismissed due to such problems. Portability to platforms other than OpenSolaris based distributions was not a requirement. I am unfamiliar with the portability issues you raise regarding Python. > - Availability: Neither Suse Linux or any BSD variants (FreeBSD, > OpenBSD, NetBSD) provide Mercurial packages as part of their > distributions. Choosing a niece product may not be wise. git, > Subversion and bitkeeper are not only more popular - they are also > much more widespread and better tested than Mercurial thanks to the > far larger community. Again, ON consolidation development on other platforms was not a requirement. Of the list you mention, BitKeeper is not OSS (Requirement E0) and Subversion is not distributed; git was evaluated as a part of this effort. Results of the evaluation are available on the Tools community web tree: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/tools/ One of the upcoming submissions for the freeware consolidation will be to ensure that Subversion and Mercurial are available in one or more of the standard installation scenarios. Thanks for the feedback. - Stephen -- Stephen Hahn, PhD Solaris Kernel Development, Sun Microsystems [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://blogs.sun.com/sch/ _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org