[LLVMdev] svn mirror git?

[dag at cray.com]

David Chisnall <David.Chisnall at cl.cam.ac.uk> writes:

> On 15 Nov 2012, at 12:31, <dag at cray.com> wrote:
>
>> - Easier third-party merging.  Merging via git merge/rebase is MUCH
>>  simpler than merging a tarball from svn.  I know the llvm leaders
>>  don't seem to care about this but it is a real issue for many users.
>> 
>> - Ease of fork/merge.  git makes it easy to experiment with long-lived
>>  development branches.  svn forces all development into trunk which
>>  limits experimentation and innovation.
>
> Neither of these are true.  There is nothing stopping people from
> working in branches in svn

Yes there is.  I have asked about it many times and have always been
refused.

> and merging from branches is easy. 

That is absolutely not true for any significant merge operation.

> The advantage with git is that it's very easy to have your fork
> somewhere where no one else sees it and your changes get lost and
> forgotten.

Actually that's true today with svn.  We have a ton of changes here we'd
like to submit but the process is really painful.

> Your point about small incremental commits is also untrue.  svn
> encourages small incremental commits and, more importantly, encourages
> small incremental pushes upstream.  

An svn commit is an expensive operation.  A git commit is a cheap
operation.  That's why I'm referring to.  Development inertia under svn
tends to steer the developer toward making larger changes before
committing.  With git committing becomes an almost unnoticed part of the
process.  At least that's been my experience.

> This is something we want to encourage: we don't want to make it
> easier for people to have private forks than it is to push them
> upstream.

There is value in those private forks.  As I said, having places to
experiment is important.

                             -David