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Date:      Sat, 19 Sep 2020 17:44:50 -0300
From:      =?utf-8?Q?Lucas_Nali_de_Magalh=C3=A3es?= <rollingbits@gmail.com>
To:        Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
Cc:        Chris <bsd-lists@bsdforge.com>, Kristof Provost <kp@freebsd.org>, FreeBSD Current <FreeBSD-current@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Plans for git
Message-ID:  <C3E06517-66A9-4486-BED2-54FC7CD69AF9@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfqoFC9vD7ue=7FfYbaxYDivFxRX45DQNVRuidj%2BDvq_2A@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CANCZdfqoFC9vD7ue=7FfYbaxYDivFxRX45DQNVRuidj%2BDvq_2A@mail.gmail.com>

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Just My 2=C2=A2=E2=80=A6=20

> On Sep 3, 2020, at 5:19 PM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>=20
> =EF=BB=BFOn Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 1:32 PM Chris <bsd-lists@bsdforge.com> wro=
te:
>=20
>>> On 2020-09-03 11:33, Kristof Provost wrote:
>>> On 3 Sep 2020, at 19:56, Chris wrote:
>>>> Why was the intention to switch NOT announced as such MUCH sooner?
>>>>=20
>>> There was discussion about a possible switch to git on the freebsd-git
>>> mailing
>>> list as early as February 2017:
>>>=20
>> https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-git/2017-February/000092.html=

>>>=20
>>> Ed gave a talk about FreeBSD and git back in 2018:
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DG8wQ88d85s4
>>>=20
>>> The Git Transition Working group was mentioned in the quarterly status
>>> reports a
>>> year ago:
>> https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2019-07-2019-09.html
>>> and
>>> https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2019-04-2019-06.html
>> It appears to me that the references you make here all allude to
>> _investigation_
>> of a _possibility_ as opposed to a _likelihood_, or an _inevitable_.
>> IMHO a change as significant as this, which will require tossing years of=

>> tooling
>> out the window, and an untold amount of _re_tooling. Should have created a=
n
>> announcement at _least_ as significant as a new release gets on the maili=
ng
>> lists.
>>=20
>=20
> Yes. We've been working on this for years. We've been working on the
> retooling in earnest for the last 6 months. We didn't make an announcement=

> because we wanted to have most of the pieces in place before we did that.
> We've been doing the multi-year process for multiple years now. I'll also
> point out that only the 'git' people showed. A number of other ideas were
> suggested, but nothing else was stood up in a serious way (hg came the
> closest to setting up an exporter). Since there was really no alternatives=

> being proposed to git, the process was less visible than if we'd had to
> have had a hg vs git bake off. One step has lead to the next, with much
> status reporting done for years.
>=20
> Subversion, btw, is not viable in the long run. The Apache foundation has
> moved all its projects from svn to git. The velocity of features with svn
> has diminished, and the number of CI/CT/etc tool sets that supported svn
> well has been dropping over time. It's also been identified as a barrier t=
o
> entry for the project. Sure, some people climb the learning curve to learn=

> and understand it, but our survey data has shown that for every one that
> did take the time, many others did not and simply didn't contribute.
>=20
> All of these issues have been discussed at length at conferences for the
> last 5 years at least, with increasing levels of sophistication. Had there=

> been a BSDcan this year, I'd hoped to do a talk / BOF on this to help
> socialize the ideas and to get people's feedback in real time (rather than=

> the slow and difficult process of getting it just in email).
>=20
> We've also talked about this in the BSD office hours and core election
> forums over the past year.
>=20
> We've been rolling out the beta git repo now for 3 months. People have
> found issues and we've been correcting them. We've heard from people that
> their automated tooling needs a bit of transition time, so we'll be
> exporting the stable/11 and stable/12 branches back into subversion (and
> the release branches) after the conversion for the life of those
> branches, though we don't plan on doing it for the current nor stable/13
> branches (due to the inefficiencies of git-svn, we need separate trees for=

> each, and each tree takes over a day to setup). We know we need some bette=
r
> docs (we have some decent preliminary ones, but there's some missing bits
> in them, and they are too long for more casual users). We need to spell ou=
t
> different commit policies, how we're going to have to shift our "MFC"
> terminology because that's very CVS/SVN centric (in git a merge means a
> more specific thing than it does in svn. A cherry-pick in git is also
> called a merge in svn, for example). We need to document to the developers=

> how to make the shift (this doc is mostly complete and was posted earlier,=

> though it could use some TLC). We'd hoped to have the documents done, the
> policies written and vetted and have a good test system before making an
> announcement. The last thing I wanted was to make a big announcement, only=

> to fail to deliver. And since each step of the process followed naturally,=

> there wasn't a clear A/B decision point where an announcement could have
> been generated. We were getting close to publishing the final schedule whe=
n
> this thread popped up, though, since it is finally feeling like it will be=

> real soon. I also had hoped to refine things so that existing developers
> and users would have only minor disruption at the cut over because things
> were well documented.
>=20
> And once we have all the basics of phase 1 (which is just going to be 'do
> FreeBSD's current workflow in git, making minimal changes initially), we'l=
l
> start on the refinements to the workflow that will help improve the qualit=
y
> of code, make it easier to integrate changes, etc. There's quite the
> diversity of views and opinions in the larger open source world on what
> best practices are here, with different projects doing different things. I=
t
> will take some time for the project to adopt these new tools, new work
> flows and realize that in some cases a diversity of tools can be an
> advantage rather than a liability. This may be especially true as the need=
s
> of the ports tree differ from the needs of the src tree and what's optimal=

> for one may not work too well for the other.
>=20
> So a lot of my reaction in the past few days has been frustration that thi=
s
> came up about a week before we had all our ducks in a row to talk about it=

> effectively and talk about the transition plans. I apologize for being so
> snarky about it.

The thing that bugs me most is the fact that this all happened and was done w=
ithout bringing public attention until recently. It wasn't the fragility of t=
he argumentations nor the feeling that we are now following the group. Many o=
f the initiatives that didn't went forward and have been removed I evaluated=
 as a positive point in the project, even. I saw many projects and ideas die=
 due to bad management and lack of action, not for the kind of argumentation=
 presented.

--=20
rollingbits =E2=80=94 =F0=9F=93=A7 rollingbits@gmail.com =F0=9F=93=A7 rollin=
gbits@terra.com.br =F0=9F=93=A7 rollingbits@yahoo.com =F0=9F=93=A7 rollingbi=
ts@globo.com =F0=9F=93=A7 rollingbits@icloud.com




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