Proposals/feedback for a distributed version control system for cutecash?

[John Ralls]

On Mar 28, 2010, at 8:48 PM, Yawar Amin wrote:

> On 3/27/10 6:57 AM, Christian Stimming said:
>> What is the experience around here with distributed version control systems 
>> (VCS) for a project of our size? In the long run I'd like to continue the work 
>> on the cutecash experiment outside of the gnucash SVN repository, and 
>> preferrably in a distributed VCS. I'd like to collect some feedback about the 
>> pros and cons of the distributed VCS systems around here...
>> 
>> Ideally, I'd like to find a hosting location with distributed VCS hosting 
>> which automatically imports and tracks the gnucash/trunk SVN branch, though. 
>> However, the only hosting place that supports this seems to be launchpad.net - 
>> and their VCS is bazaar. (Hosting sites for git such as github.com at most 
>> import a one-shot import from SVN, but no automatic continuous tracking.)
>> 
> 
> I'd love to see Cutecash (and GnuCash) migrate to a DVCS. It seems like
> most devs in this list who use a DVCS use Git, so it's probably an easy
> decision to pick Git and GitHub.
> 
> I would add that for a history-rich project like GnuCash, it'd be very
> useful to have a bare Git repo put up somewhere that could be downloaded
> (possibly with a download manager that has HTTP resume support) and then
> updated to the latest changesets. This avoids the `git clone' command
> which might take a long time over slow connections and might not be
> resumeable. A once-a-day updated bare Git repo would probably be good
> enough.
> 
> This idea can probably be applied even now because people can use a bare
> Git repo and contribute to the project while it's still on Subversion,
> thanks to git-svn. So potential new contributors get the benefits of an
> easily downloaded file and locally-available full repo history at the
> same time. And sure, everyone can still clone if they want.
> 
>> [...]
>> Do you know of any hosting sites with that VCS that offers continuous 
>> tracking of the original SVN branch?
>> 
> 
> Unless I misunderstand, doesn't git-svn currently offer continuous
> tracking (pull & rebase or merge, commit & push)? Probably it's a bit
> slower than pulling from a native Git repo though.

I think launchpad automagically syncs periodically with a "master" svn repo, which is what Christian is looking for. It's not to hard to set up a cron job to do git-svn rebase && git push foo, so I wouldn't see that as a major obstacle, but Christian might see it differently.

Github probably isn't the right public repo for Gnucash just because it works (AFAICT) exclusively on the "pull" model. Gnucash has enough contributors and commits that that would be a PITA for whoever controlled the master repo. Gnome allows multiple pushers, which is a better model for us. Github is still an excellent choice for Cutecash, though.

Regards,
John Ralls