[gst-devel] GStreamer switching to git

[David Schleef]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 01:49:18AM +0300, Ole André Vadla Ravnås wrote:
> So then I feel inclined to ask; why was this decision made without any
> technical discussion with all interested parties in the community?
...


The reasons for choosing a new VCS are not technical.  There are
essentially only minor technical differences between the various
options.  An individual feature may seem very important to you, but
in the grand scheme of things, it probably isn't.  Everything has
its plusses and minuses.

The reasons for choosing a particular VCS are:

 - Do we have hosting available?  Are we (the main group of developers)
   familiar with the admins, know how to find them on IRC, know how to
   get them to do maintence, etc?  Does one of us have admin priviliges?
   Are there regular backups?

 - Is there someone willing to invest the time (say, two weeks) to
   convert the repository, with all its warts, to the new VCS?

 - Is there someone (preferably several people) willing to handhold
   anyone in the IRC channel to start using the new VCS?  Are they
   capable of nicely answering the same stupid questions 10 times
   per day?  Are they able to commit to being around for at least a
   few weeks?  Are they able to spend time researching more difficult
   problems as they arise?

In each of those cases, the overwhelming choice is git.  Freedesktop.org
already uses git for most projects.  Secondly, bilboed has already
done a rough conversion, and knows what else needs to be done.  Thirdly,
there are several (well-known) people who frequent the channel who are
familiar with git, and at least one (myself) that has committed to being
a newbie punching bag.

Now, if someone (or two or three) dependable shows up and offers to do
all of the above for another VCS, I'd be all for it.  bilboed and I have
other projects we could be spending our time on.



dave...