Re: we now have "lilypond" organization on GitHub

[David Kastrup]

"Phil Holmes" <address@hidden> writes:

> From: "Urs Liska" <address@hidden>
>
>> Am 16.09.2013 12:50, schrieb David Kastrup:
>>
>>> So the question is what we should be telling the Savannah operators
>>> to make working on GNU projects using Git more feasible.
>>>
>> What about asking them to provide Gerrit as  a service?
>>
>> As far as I've read:
>> - LilyPond uses Rietveld, which isn't designed for git workflows.
>> - Rietveld isn't integrated in the process of getting code into
>> lilypond/master,
>>   but rather an artificial detour.
>> - For example the issue of commit messages that are finally pushed
>>   and don't match the reviewed code is probably related to that.
>> - Gerrit _is_ designed for git workflows.
>> - You could grant developer accounts to, say, anybody expressing
>> serious intentions to contribute
>> - These could have the right to push the Gerrit
>> - The core developers have the right to approve/reject proposals
>>   as well as pushing directly to the main repo
>> - Approval of a patch immediately merges it into the main code base.
>> - This would make the way for externals' code into the main code base
>>   more straightforward and transparent.
>
> IMHO this is solving a problem that doesn't exist.  Using LilyDev
> (possibly in a Virtual Machine) provides git and git-cl.  Git allows a
> developer to create a patch with 2 commands: git commit and git
> format-patch.  That can be uploaded to Rietveld with a single command
> (possibly 2 commands, depending on what you were doing earlier).  When
> the review is passed, it can be pushed to staging with 4 simple
> commands; or mailed to -devel for any active developer without push
> access - these are very rare.
>
> How hard is that?

Well, try getting good musicians for a band where you'll be designing
and building the instruments yourself.

You'll find that it's usually less of a challenge to maintain a band
with changing members if you let them play their own instruments.

Even if your instruments are excellent.

So there certainly is some merit to experimenting a bit with setups and
see whether we find some combination of tools improving the likelihood
of casual contributions.

Now quite a bit of work on LilyPond still requires a rather special
mixture of skill sets, so we should not set hopes too high.  But it's
likely that some experiments could get a good return for their efforts,
and the Rietveld/Git combination is clearly not a marriage made in
heaven.

-- 
David Kastrup