github source

[Ian Wadham]

On 21/04/2013, at 8:00 AM, Chris Jones wrote:
> On 20 Apr 2013, at 9:50pm, Roger Pack <rogerdpack2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> As a note, in case there's a poll or anything, here's my +1 for at
>> least having a github mirror, if not moving to github entirely for
>> trunk development.
> 
> -1
> 
> I just don't get git. Much prefer svn.

GIT is very good for handling huge projects, such as Linux kernel, KDE
desktop or Qt cross-platform GUI library for C++.  There you have 100's
of developers with lots of interdependencies and many developments
of future features or experimental stuff on branches.

Last year I was mentoring a GSoc student while he ported my KDE
game called KGoldrunner to a new graphics library.  It was a big job
(for two people) and I started it on a SVN branch.  Half-way through
the work, the other KDE Games guys decided to move all the games
into GIT and join the rest of KDE.  I felt much as you do and was dragged
kicking and screaming along with the rest, particularly as, by that time,
we already had a large unmerged branch in KGoldrunner.

When my student had finished, came the time for the big merge back
into Master (formerly trunk).  Previously I had had bad experiences
with merging a large SVN branch, because there is always parallel
activity on Master (or trunk) in KDE (e.g. as translation bots do their
work), so I was dreading this merge.  To my great surprise and delight,
it went off without a hitch … :-)  So now I have great respect for GIT.

That said, I think MacPorts might be just as comfortable staying with
SVN for as long as it is well-supported.  There is no point in changing
unless there are significant advantages to the MacPorts project as a
whole and it is a lot of work to port code from SVN to GIT and preserve
all the history faithfully.  Two of the KDE Games guys were on it
for months.

All the best, Ian W.