[Zope-dev] Supporting interworking with repository branches on github

Tres Seaver tseaver at palladion.com
Wed Nov 23 14:50:49 UTC 2011


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On 11/22/2011 05:19 PM, Laurence Rowe wrote:
> On 22 November 2011 21:46, Tres Seaver <tseaver at palladion.com> wrote:
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>> On 11/22/2011 12:13 PM, Laurence Rowe wrote:
>>> As you are already aware, at the SF Zope sprint we used Git and 
>>> github for our work. The work contained in 
>>> https://github.com/zopefoundation is by people who have already
>>> signed the Zope Foundation contributor agreement.
>>> 
>>> While the Zope Foundation deliberates on version control, I think 
>>> it's likely that development will continue using Git and Github.
>>> We want to do this in a way that maintains flexibility for code
>>> committed to Git to also be committed to svn.zope.org, so it would
>>> be helpful to get a list of Name, Email, username for svn.zope.org
>>> committers to facilitate the creation of an author mapping file.
>>> (Presumably this information is in LDAP or similar.)
>>> 
>>> We would of course be happy to hand administration rights of the 
>>> github organization to the Zope Foundation if it was felt to be 
>>> helpful in ensuring that contributions to that repository counted 
>>> under the committer agreement.
>> 
>> 
>> Please don't try to jump the gun on the process here:  you should
>> be thinking of the existing Github branches as merely "scratchpads"
>> for the sprint work, which should be merged into the canonical
>> repository when they are ready.  It is not appropriate for a small
>> subset of the community to preempt this kind of choid: "ask
>> forgiveness rather than permission" is *not* going to fly here, and
>> trying to push harder only irritates folks you might otherwise
>> persuade.
> 
> I think some indication of a timetable for that process is necessary.


I said earlier that this kind of decision would be best addressed at the
annual meeting of the foundation in Q1 2012.  I also indicated that I
didn't think github vs. the SVN status quo was the only possible choice.


> The view of many of those at the sprint was that it would be less
> work to simply fork and develop a custom publisher for Plone.


I imagine that the effort is substantially bigger than you think.  I also
don't think that the damage to community goodwill would be negligible here.


> I think there is value to keeping that work under the auspices of the
> Zope Foundation as it may be helpful for other projects currently on
> Zope 2. But realistically, unless the Zope Foundation is interested
> in supporting those developers looking to work on a new project by 
> enabling them to use a modern version control system then my view is 
> unlikely to prevail.


First, this is not a "new project":  the existing github repos contain what
are really a handful of commits across two projects (Zope and
Products.ZCatalog;  the ZConfig and Products.PythonScripts repos don't have
any commits).  The deltas are very small compared to the installed base,
and could be trivially landed back in SVN today, either on the respective
trunks or on branches.

Second, it is already feasible to work with modern VCSes against the
existing SVN repository:  I've been doing it with bzr for literally years
now;  I know of lots of documentation on using git against SVN as well. Of
course, Github is more than a VCS, but its main advantage over other
solutions lies in being able to accept casual contributions from non-core
developers, which is hardly in scope for the early phases of the Zope4
effort.

What *is* being "blocked" here is a push by a relatively small group of
committers[1] to impose a unilateral change to a long-established
development culture, without prior consultation, and backed by a
not-very-thinly-veiled threat of a fork.


[1] I count you, rossp, mikko, and garbas as having non-merged branches.


Tres.
- -- 
===================================================================
Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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