[llvm-dev] [cfe-dev] GitHub anyone?

[Aaron Ballman via llvm-dev]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 3:10 PM, Renato Golin <renato.golin at linaro.org> wrote:
> On 1 June 2016 at 19:36, Aaron Ballman <aaron at aaronballman.com> wrote:
>> Despite people's reservations of a git-only repository?
>
> Hi Aaron, not at all!
>
> I was especially vague on my first email to make sure SVN folks would
> be shoved on the side, but John had asked for a full plan *in the case
> we move*, and I was just completing the picture.

Oh! That makes perfect sense to me. Thank you for the clarification!

> Having said that, I can't take that decision alone, and my own opinion
> is irrelevant on the grand scheme.
>
> Right now, our main repo is in SVN with most people using Git.

Our main repo is in SVN; I would say we don't know what most people
are using (aside from "svn for write access because it's the only
option").

> If the
> vast majority vote for the move, it wouldn't be fair to continue to
> force SVN on them, and it would be overall less effort for the few
> people that prefer SVN to have a bit more work than they have today,
> to save the majority of Git users the extra work. I have no idea how
> much people is enough to move to Git, but unless we fix the sub-module
> problem, there's no point in even trying.

Fair points, but with the caveat that people using git today have a
workable solution (as I understand it, and I could be totally wrong)
using the git mirrors. That's not a reason to not transition from svn
to git, however.

> So, my personal points are:
>
> 1. We can only move IFF the Git solution is technically equivalent or
> superior than what we have today.
>
> 2. We should only move IFF the vast majority will see benefits from
> it, even if a small minority will see some increased effort. Of
> course, the balance of efforts has to be overall positive.

Agreed with both of these points.

> 3. We should not move if there is no replacement for SVN users at the
> moment.

Agreed.

> We should try to encourage SVN users to move to Git, to speed
> up the move, though.

This is implying that we will move, which I think should still be left
as a vague question mark until we have more answers. Based on that, I
think it's premature to encourage anyone to switch to git.

> I'm assuming the SVN vs. Git argument is not just a personal thing,
> but a tooling / infrastructure issue. The bigger picture here is not
> which VCS is better, but getting rid of a huge infrastructure cost
> from our part, which nowadays means moving to Git or using
> SourceForge.

I agree that there are infrastructure costs to consider. I just hope
we don't consider those at the expense of a functioning system that
people are used to using and already have workflows based on. Git may
be the new shiny, but it's not what we use today for LLVM. It's
sometimes easy to forget there's also cost with telling the community
"please go learn a new, very different toolset so that you can
continue to contribute to the project." I'm not making a claim that
the costs aren't worth the gains (because this might very well be the
correct time to switch VCS), but I am worried when emails make it
sound like switching to git-only is a foregone conclusion, which is a
bit of a strange way to start a discussion about whether the community
wants to switch. That being said, I like that we're discussing what a
switch would look like were one to occur so that we can suss out all
the pros and cons!

~Aaron