[llvm-dev] [RFC] One or many git repositories?

[Mehdi Amini via llvm-dev]

> On Jul 20, 2016, at 5:56 PM, Renato Golin via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> On 21 July 2016 at 01:39, Justin Lebar <jlebar at google.com> wrote:
>> This is true if you s/checkout/clone/.  With a single repo, you must
>> clone (download) everything (*), but after you've done so you can use
>> sparse checkouts to check out (create a working copy of) only llvm and
>> clang.  So you should only notice the fact that there exist things
>> other than llvm and clang when you first clone (download) llvm.
> 
> So, we use that to a certain extent.
> 
> Linaro's GCC validation uses the full checkout, then do a shallow
> checkout that only has the updates.
> 
> Our LLVM scripts, OTOH, clone all repos and use worktree for *all*
> branches, and we only branch on the repos that we choose, for each
> "working dir".
> 
> Our scripts probably would need certain modifications... but it should be fine.
> 
> But I'm not, by far, the most problematic user.
> 
> The real problem, and why people accepted sub-modules, is that a lot
> of downstream people only use one or another projects. Mostly LLVM or
> Clang or libc++.
> 
> Checking out all of it is bad, but having them officially interlinked,
> it seems, is worse. IIUC, the problem is that the projects are now
> built independently on their projects, but more and more CMake changes
> are creeping in, making it harder and harder to separate their
> projects from the rest of LLVM. This means they'll now depend on a
> much larger body of sources that will need to be compiled together,
> and will probably mean they'll abandon LLVM in favour of something
> lighter.
> 
> I honestly don't know how big is that problem, I don't have it myself,
> but I "can imagine" compiling LLVM and Clang without need would be
> pretty bad.


You seem to imply that all the projects in the single repo would be built by default, while it is not part of the proposal.
Actually I’d expect an opt-in mechanism, so that: `mkdir build-llvm && cd build-llvm && cmake ../llvm` only builds LLVM.

— 
Mehdi