Re: conversion to git

[Bob Proulx]

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> Git seems to be quite new and still very Linux centric.

But I expect that Eric is using it on MS however.  That's about as far
from GNU/Linux as one can get.  :-)

> It is not even included in the 'ports' collection on my FreeBSD
> system (only GNU 'git' is there which the 'git' INSTALL file says
> that no one wants anyway).

There is definitely some activity for git in FreeBSD.  It is
apparently in the running for the version control conversion.

  http://wiki.freebsd.org/VersionControl

  http://wiki.freebsd.org/GitConversion

> When going to install the whole thing on my Solaris box, I can not
> finish building everything without installing a package called
> 'AsciiDoc' which says that it installs in the "normal places" which
> when I went to look means into the very *core* of my operating
> system unless several scripts are manually hacked.

It's a python based program.

> Then I did a 'make -n' to see what would be installed when I
> installed git and see that it will install 139 new executable
> commands so that it can pretend to be emacs command completion if
> Bash is used.  Ugh! Ugh!  Ugh!

Git takes a toolbox based approach.  The namespace is clear because
all commands always start with "git-".  Having the toolbox makes
possible many things that when working with CVS could either only be
dreamed of or required special purpose programs outside of CVS.  If
all of the many useful cvs add-ons were pushed into the cvs package
and given a cvs-* namespace it would look similar.

The toolbox approach taken by git is that complex programs are built
up out of simpler targeted programs.  I like the toolbox because as a
developer there are a lot of very powerful tools on the workbench that
are ready to go when I need them.  When I don't need them the tool
sits on the peg on the wall as I don't need to use every tool in the
toolbox.  The daily routine uses only a very few commands.

> It seems that in the last couple of years, a plethora of new 
> versioning systems have emerged because all of a sudden everyone 
> decided that they didn't like the CVS they had been successfully using 
> since 1992.

It did explode into existence in the last few years.  Until there were
a few working examples no one knew what they were missing.  Then all
of a sudden a couple of distributed version control systems became
available and people started to use them.  This was quite an
eye-opening experience and people liked them very much.  Liked them
enough to improve upon them.  Sometimes "improve" meant fork a new
project to take things in a different direction.  It has certainly
been an exciting development area.

> Git, arch, aegis, mercurial, quilt, subversion, CVS, RCS, SCCS, plus 
> many proprietary systems.  It seems that version control is becomming 
> the new Babel of open source.

Yes, it is becoming quiet a busy place.  In many ways though I think
many of those projects that you cite were stepping stones along the
path.  SCCS created a need for something better.  RCS was an awsome
program when I first started using it in the 1980's.  It was clearly a
stepping stone for CVS.  But would a large group of geographically
separated people on the net choose RCS today?  In a similar way I
think many of the initially available distributed vcs programs were
stepping stones on the path to git.  (I will ignore the fact that
advocates of other systems would claim that git is simply a stepping
stone on the way to system xyz. :-)

> Before we know it every project we come in contact with will be
> using a different version control system and all that is left is a
> state of perpetual confusion in the open source community.

RCS was great.  CVS pushed use of RCS out.  CVS was great.  Now,
today, several very good distributed version control systems exist and
are in daily use.  They are here to stay because they have many
benefits over CVS.  People have used them and now having used them
want to keep using them.  This is definitely a case where "standard is
better" is losing out because "better" is really, really much better.
It is not going to be possible to put this genie back into the bottle.
I think this would be as difficult as trying to convince people that
graphical systems should be forgotten and we should return to
character terminals.  It really is a fundamentally powerful issue.

As far as the plethora of systems in use I believe that a
consolidation is occurring.  In particular I see that Git is gaining a
larger and larger community of developers every day.  People will
always argue endlessly that abc is better or worse than xyz.  But in
the end I don't think there will actually be that many different
systems in active projects being used.  I think Git is definitely in
the running to be the dominate version control system.  It is a good
choice for autoconf.

Bob