Re: conversion to git

[Eric Blake]

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According to Bob Friesenhahn on 9/19/2007 7:12 PM:

Hi Bob,

>>
>> The initial git import is complete.  Feel free to check it out:
>>
>> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=autoconf.git
> 
> What is the purpose of converting to git?

Primarily speed, but also security.  In particular, Bruno found a rather
telling flaw in the CVS model of pushing all local files to the server,
and letting the server do all the work:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2007-03/msg00474.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-cvs/2007-01/msg00018.html

Distributed version control systems (dvcs) do not have this flaw.

Personally, I enjoy the speed of browsing history on my own machine with
gitk rather than the slowness that is cvsweb.  It makes archeological digs
through version control much faster.

Other benefits - git can trace file renames, and has a much more efficient
branching scheme than CVS.   Which means simultaneous development on
unrelated topic branches is much easier to manage.

>  Is this a political statement
> (e.g. "Linux GNU" vs "GNU Linux") or is there a concrete purpose?  What
> is the cost vs benefit of the conversion?  Who participated in the
> decision to make this conversion?

The gnulib list made the conversion first; it has been discussed there for
nearly half a year, and the group consensus was that git provided enough
benefits that it was worth switching, provided that read-only CVS access
was still possible.  For example:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/cgi-bin/namazu.cgi?query=conversion+git&submit=Search%21&idxname=bug-gnulib&max=20&result=normal&sort=score

A reasonable number of the autoconf maintainers follow the gnulib list.
And for those that don't, I stand by my promise to keep both the CVS and
git repositories in sync for a while longer, until we are sure that the
time has come to favor the git repository.  I just hope it is faster than
the 6 months it took gnulib (although a lot of that delay was waiting for
git 1.5.3 to be released, as well as infrastructure improvements on
savannah to support git-based projects).

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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