On Mon, May 03, 2010 at 08:14:19PM -0400, James E Keenan wrote: > (e) If there is a dispute over an open source project's policies and > practices, the burden of proof falls on those in the project who > wish to change those policies or practices.
I disagree with the "burden of proof" argument given here. There is currently a super-majority of Parrot developers that have expressed a preference for git [1], those in favor of keeping svn have some obligation to justify their choice as well. [1] http://parrot.org/content/straw-poll-which-version-control-system-would-you-parrot-use > The rationale for > change and its supporting evidence should be presented in a more or > less structured way on the project's mailing list or in some other > appropriate forum. This has been done already, see http://trac.parrot.org/parrot/wiki/GitObjections . > 2. It follows the premises above that to date I am not favorably > impressed with the quality of the discussion of VCS changes in the > Parrot project. Even though I am not as skeptical of git as Allison > is, I do believe that she is correct to challenge the git advocates > to provide better substantiated arguments than they have so far. At least three Parrot core committers and board members -- myself, chromatic, and Will Coleda, have expressed our _strong_ preference for git over svn. I'm saddened that you are not "favorably impressed" with our discussions on the topic. We *have* provided "better substantiated arguments" to Allison's objections in the past in a structured form -- see the GitObjections wiki page mentioned above. If there are additional objections that are not being considered on that page, please add them. > (i) What are the strengths and weaknesses of both centralized and > distributed VCSes? I think this question leads the discussion down a blind alley. A distributed VCS like git can easily act like a centralized system (for example, Rakudo currently uses git like a centralized VCS). > (ii) There are at least three distributed VCSes that, on the basis > of their adoption by other large, open-source projects, deserve our > attention: git, mercurial and bazaar. What are the strengths and > weaknesses of each? The straw poll taken last September didn't see anyone who thought mercurial or bazaar would be better choices than git. I don't believe that we need an extensive review to convince ourselves of this. > (iii) If we do decide to move to a distributed VCS and settle on a > particular VCS, what shall our migration plan be? (Note: On the > basis of my past and current experiences, this is the issue that > needs the most discussion but will likely get the least.) Having actually performed a couple of svn->git migrations among multi-contributor open-source projects (including Rakudo), I can categorically tell you that this is not at all hard to do. The hardest part is helping contributors learn the git commands -- I've already created a page for this at http://trac.parrot.org/parrot/wiki/GitCookbook-Pm -- it covers the vast majority of cases that a typical contributor is likely to encounter. ---- I don't deny that there are some git advocates in the Parrot community that have been overly passionate or hyperbolic in terms of their arguments for migrating to git. But I also think you may be using that extremism to quickly dismiss (and frankly fail to acknowledge) the efforts that several git advocates have been making for a long time towards a rational discussion of this topic. Pm _______________________________________________ http://lists.parrot.org/mailman/listinfo/parrot-dev
