Public Git repo

[Mike Alexander]

--On January 5, 2011 2:12:06 PM -0500 Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU> 
wrote:

> I understand the "I like git, so everyone should use it" mentality.
> I'm trying to make sure we don't move over to git only because of
> that.  I want to make sure there are real technical reasons to spend
> the time and effort to not only migrate the source repository but
> also migrate all our tools and configurations to use a new set of
> tools.
>
> It's not zero-effort.  There's a bunch of backend scripts and ties
> that get used.  If we move the git we'd possibly lose trac (or we'd
> have to migrate to something else).  We'd have to re-script all the
> automatic build scripts and tools.  We'd have to rework the server,
> authentication, and access policies.
>
> At the end of the day, I feel the question is does git buy us so much
> that it's worth the pain to convert?
>
> I get the "git is cool" aspect of it.  But I'm trying to get people
> ignore the "git is cool" part and to seriously think about the
> technicalities: what does git buy us that we don't have now, and will
> we really truly use those features that git provides that svn (or
> other tools built on svn, including git-svn) does not?

For the record, I agree entirely with this.  Changing is painful and 
needs to be worth the pain.  There are lots of source code management 
systems out there and almost all of them have advantages (and people 
who swear by them).  Personally my favorite is Clearcase, but we're 
certainly not moving to that!  Mercurial is not too bad either, and I 
already use that for other open source projects.  Git is probably good 
too, but I don't know it very well.

        Mike