[gst-devel] GStreamer switching to git

[Ole André Vadla Ravnås]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 4:59 AM, David Schleef <ds at schleef.org> wrote:
> 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.
...

I completely agree, and I'm sorry if my poor phrasing got this
discussion off on the wrong foot. What I meant by 'technical
discussion' wasn't to find 'the ultimate DRCS', because there is none
(they all have their pros and cons), but also take into account the
client side implications and not only the server-side ones. If a
particular choice makes development on one particular platform heavily
impaired, and makes it harder to get fresh blood on board on that
platform, that's a technical reason why such a decision might not be
the greatest idea, at least for the time being.

> 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.

It is certainly true that git is used for a lot of freedesktop.org
projects, but to most of them Windows is an irrelevant OS, or a really
minor one only used through emulation layers like Cygwin. If the
developers are okay with a full-blown POSIX system on top of Windows
to build and run things, then git's certainly fine and probably a very
good choice.

Cheers,
Ole André