Re: [Savannah-help-public] coreutils is moving to distributed version control

[Sylvain Beucler]

On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 02:08:10PM +0200, Jim Meyering wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Currently, the coreutils package uses CVS for version control.  However,
> I am shifting coreutils development to git -- or maybe even mercurial.
> Will savannah support git or mercurial soon?

I would welcome a bit more information about those. Do they only need
a plain "download area" accessible with sftp or rsync+ssh? That may be
setup quickly enough. Maybe on a non-standard port, but quickly
enough.


A concern I have with those tools, is that unlike with CVS, any
project member can alter/damage the history, willingly or by mistake.
Did you think of this issue and is it ok with you?

With Arch, archives are 'append-only' thanks to a dedicated sftp
patch, but I doubt we'd be able to apply the same technique for any
SCM. If it's just a matter of blocking the 'rm' command in sftp, that
could be quickly done, but depending on git usage patterns, that may
not be desirable.


> I would also consider using monotone.

Their network support is not satisfying enough yet, as I mentioned in
gnu-prog-discuss. Unless there's something new about it?


> FYI, I can already convert my coreutils module (with 15 years of CVS
> history) into a git or mercurial repository, preserving branches, history,
> etc.  There are several advantages to using a distributed version control
> system -- I doubt it'll help if I list them here.  However, that said,
> I did do an informal survey and some experiments with git, mercurial,
> monotone, and svk, and finally settled on git for coreutils.

Didn't you try GNU Arch btw?

Also if you have some notes about your experiments I'd be personaly
interested in them :)


> But I do use mercurial, too, and find it quite usable, featureful
> and well-maintained.

Ok. When you say you use 'git', does that mean 'bare git' or 'cogito'?
Does supporting git implies supporting mercurial, darcsgit and the
like?


Last, what would be your acceptable level of "support" at Savannah? Is
simple hosting enough in a first step, or would you also need commit
notifications / web browsers / etc.?

-- 
Sylvain