Re: [Simulavr-devel] Discussion: how to proceed with thedeveloment on GIT repo?

[Onno Kortmann]

Hi,

I'm quite busy at the moment, so I only read this discussion for some days but 
I think it is time to chime in.

I discussed the last developments with Thomas and I was using git specifically 
because some of you had problems with me having commit access.

This may be for good a reason, because I surely take simulavrxx on a 
more 'experimental' path. That's the way I like it and it may be completely 
different to what the others think.

That said, and to answer the question about git's advantages: git easily 
supports multiple branches within one repository, which makes it very easy to 
have such an experimental branch living beside the stable stuff in the main 
repository. People who clone the repo get everything and can look at the 
states of the various branches. 

Git surely does not replace communication on the ML here, but I feel it gives 
people a great incentive to contribute if a main dev would give commit access 
or, at least, pull the changes from some other repository (such as mine on 
github) into the main one.
It does not need to be the main 'stable' branch - it can just be something 
like 'atxmega-joe-sixpack' or similar. But it would be there, easily visible 
and easily clonable by other people. IMO, development would take a more 
dynamic path then as people would be able to quickly start using e.g. our 
(Thomas and mine) branch if they think it is worth it. Discussion of all 
forks could take place on the ML.

This of course would create a fork but I think this is always the case if you 
want to support a stable and a development version. And that, I think, would 
be very good idea now.
Just look how Thomas and I moved the project a little bit, IMHO forward :-)

I think even you decide that our changes are not worth it to be included 
in 'main', this project is in a state where a collection of slightly 
incompatible forks in a central place is better than no development at all. 

It would be nice if the project would only have a single point where the 
latest source code is, and this should be the savannah repository.

And, of course, no one really takes away all the hard coding work of 
integrating a diverged fork, but git at least helps as much as it can in 
doing merges.
Also, it supports local development, which is very important if a dev does not 
have commit access to the central repository. Having multiple copies of 
CVS/SVN trees is no fun.

> That would be fine with me, as long as the old simulavr-0.1.2 codebase
> is not completely discarded then.
If wished, I volunteer to import the old code base into a git repository. It 
boils down to a call of 'git cvs-import' with the correct parameter set.

As its code base is completely independent of the simulavrxx stuff, it is 
probably a good idea to have an own separate git repository for it. Without 
any simulavrxx stuff. It hope savannah supports that.

Cheers,

Onno