Jim Meyering wrote:
Mike McGrath mmcgrath@redhat.com wrote:
Jim Meyering wrote:
...
At 5GB+, (4.5GB for a copy of the cvs repo + 700MB for git) that's too heavy for me. And besides, it'd really be better under the Fedora umbrella. Seeing as how much more efficient the git protocol is, if a few people switch to it from cvs, it'd actually decrease network bandwidth requirements.
Is there anything I can do to revive this idea? For example, I'd be happy to own and set up the tools/infrastructure required to make it all work (I've already done this on three public servers). All I'd need is an open git port and access to the config files.
If you think git is so much better than CVS (many would agree with you) come up with a proposal on how we can migrate to it, propose it, then convince people its the right thing to do.
I consider the automated cvs-to-git mirroring to be the first step in any conversion proposal:
First, give people an idea of what they can expect in a git-based dVCS, without requiring any change. It lets people continue to use the tools they're familiar with, and allows the better parts of a dVCS to begin to show up the radar of those who haven't yet had time to explore them.
I don't really buy this because it's a one-way transaction. The people that need to be convinced that there's value in switching to git vs bzr vs hg vs svn also have commit rights to the main repository. For a demo to reach this audience you need to get them the ability to work from this tree. Which means they need to be able to checkout, checkin, tag, and request builds from it.
[snip]
Helping a big project transition is a big job, so IMHO, the only way to do it is incrementally. If you try to come up with an all-encompassing proposal, you might never get buy-in from enough people and you'll wait forever.
I'm in agreement with this part. From trying to work up a trial before I have to say that the hardest part is figuring out how we can implement changes incrementally *and* non-disruptively. (Note that the changeover will be disruptive. But we want to make it a one-time event, not an on-going, this time we're switching to bzr, next time we're switching to exploded trees, etc.)
However, I don't see a read-only mirror as an incremental step towards moving to a new VCS. It's more of a value-add for downstream distributions. IMHO we'd be much better figuring out a real interim step to make it possible for package maintainers to do actual work within a new VCS.
-Toshio