[gst-devel] GStreamer switching to git

[Ole André Vadla Ravnås]

Hi all,

As Julien pointed out there was a GStreamer summit at GUADEC on
Sunday. Sadly for me I wasn't able to attend as I arrived in Istanbul
one day too late. However, I just read Andy Wingo's blogpost[1] and
was really surprised to learn about one topic discussed and decided
upon there. It was decided to switch GStreamer from using CVS to git
(as soon as some minor migration issues have been resolved).

So then I feel inclined to ask; why was this decision made without any
technical discussion with all interested parties in the community?

I strongly object to this decision, and for one specific technical
reason. git does not work acceptably on Windows, and this is caused by
the basic design of its UI. It's a collection of shell-scripts, and
thus it relies on MSYS or cygwin. Yes, it "works", but this is like
telling people that MS Office supports Linux because you can run it
through WINE.

Doing GStreamer development on Windows has already got a high
threshold for newcomers because of things like autotools, so can we
please avoid switching our RCS to something equally orthogonal to
Windows?

git is nice just like fork() is also nice when used right, but neither
are portable and just because they "work" on such platforms doesn't
mean they're usable for developers stuck there.

I am however not too certain that it'll be possible to agree on one
DRCS, so maybe it'd be better to just stick with a centralized RCS and
use mirrored branches like quite a few of you are already doing today?

Cheers,
Ole André

[1] http://wingolog.org/archives/2008/07/09/notes-from-the-bosphorus