[LLVMdev] Poll: Do you prefer Git or SVN for LLVM development?

[Sean Silva]

> I'd imagine the most active contributors do not find themselves
> referencing this page too often, but as a newcomer, I feel it could
> use some work.

This has been in the back of my mind for a while, and I think it is
probably true.
I think that it would be more useful if you did a poll specifically
aimed at new contributors (simple rough criterion: new contributor ===
doesn't have commit access), since as you pointed out, they are the
audience of these documents.

Also, make sure that cfe-dev gets included in the vote. The current
thread is only on llvmdev.

> Git is second class, CMake gets nothing but a passing
> reference, and Ninja is not even mentioned.  Depending on the results
> of this poll, I'd be interested in rewriting it such that Git is the
> preferred way

Better idea: something like:

-----------
There are two major orthogonal decisions involved with getting started
with LLVM development:

1. You have to be able to get and sync the source code, which can be
done with either SVN <link> or Git <link>.
2. You have to build the code, which can be done with configure/make
<link> or CMake <link>.
-----------

And then we have a 4 pages: developing with SVN, developing with git,
building with configure/make, and building with CMake. This is no more
difficult than what you suggest, and it lets people choose whatever
they feel most comfortable with.

-- Sean Silva

On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Greg Fitzgerald <garious at gmail.com> wrote:
> For starters, I hope the results of this poll can help guide how the
> GettingStarted page is written.
>
> http://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html
>
> I'd imagine the most active contributors do not find themselves
> referencing this page too often, but as a newcomer, I feel it could
> use some work.  Git is second class, CMake gets nothing but a passing
> reference, and Ninja is not even mentioned.  Depending on the results
> of this poll, I'd be interested in rewriting it such that Git is the
> preferred way to get LLVM, CMake is how you configure it, and that you
> can tell CMake to generate any of several build systems including GNU
> Make, Ninja or XCode.
>
> Furthermore, should we find that few people use SVN and someone wants
> to integrate with a package manager, he or she should feel little
> obligation to support two version control systems.  Likewise, if a
> code-owner wants to introduce a code review tool, he or she should not
> have to reduce its functionality to the intersection of the git and
> subversion feature sets.
>
> Thanks,
> Greg
>
> On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 2:56 AM, Óscar Fuentes <ofv at wanadoo.es> wrote:
>> Greg Fitzgerald <garious at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> I'm curious to know if the LLVM community is deeply split when it
>>> comes to version control.  If you have a second, could you please
>>> vote?
>>>
>>> http://poll.pollcode.com/i597kq
>>
>> The result of this poll has little value in practice. In the past the
>> project leader stated that the opinions of the most active contributors
>> outweight the rest of the community. So the poll should be conducted
>> among the most active N contributors, ignoring the rest.
>>
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