Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Jim Meyering wrote:
...
> I consider the automated cvs-to-git mirroring to be the first
step
> in any conversion proposal:
>
> First, give people an idea of what they can expect in a git-based dVCS,
> without requiring any change. It lets people continue to use the tools
> they're familiar with, and allows the better parts of a dVCS to begin
> to show up the radar of those who haven't yet had time to explore them.
I don't really buy this because it's a one-way transaction. The
people that need to be convinced that there's value in switching to
git vs bzr vs hg vs svn also have commit rights to the main
repository. For a demo to reach this audience you need to get them
the ability to work from this tree. Which means they need to be able
to checkout, checkin, tag, and request builds from it.
Hi Toshio,
[didn't we talk at a Mexican place after the fudcon in Boston?]
Using such a mirror need not be a one-way transaction.
Obviously, it'd be far less useful if there were such a limitation.
When I do serious work against an upstream CVS repository, I arrange to
mirror the CVS repo to git, and do all of my work in git, committing
changes on private git branches. Then, I can easily rebase each of
those branches (sort of like cvs update), to synchronize with newer
upstream changes on the parent branch.[*] When I want to commit to
cvs, it's easy to automate using git-cvsexportcommit. While this MO is
not as comfortable as working in a git-only environment, it does help
give you a feel for what it'd be like, and *I* certainly appreciate it.
Of course, this can't help for tag/release-related operations, but it's
a good start for the rest.
Even with this slightly-contorted routine, I've appreciated using
git: for example, while using conventional diff, patch, and cvs,
it's easy to forget to "cvs add" a new file that was added by a patch.
It's also easy to forget to apply "chmod a+x..." to a script just added
by a patch. But in git, that doesn't happen as much, because the tools
do more of the work for you. And git-cvsexportcommit takes care of the
details of making sure everything in a git change set makes it back
into a cvs "commit".
Jim
[*] In case you haven't seen it yet, "git rebase --interactive" is very
useful, if you care about the "perfect patch" sort of process.
With it, there's no need for quilt/stgit/etc.