[Koha-devel] [URGENT] Move away from Savannah/CVS

[Jerry Van Baren]

Joshua M. Ferraro wrote:
> Hi MJ,
> 
> First, I'll say, as always, I appreciate your perspective,
> I think you do raise some good points. See responses below:
> 
> ----- "MJ Ray" <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:

[snip]

>>> [...] we're software developers, not proper sys admins [...]
>> I do currently work as a proper sysadmin (as much as a programmer,
>> most weeks) which is why I've not been that active on koha lately.
> The comment was certainly not meant as an insult to you or anyone
> else on koha-devel. It was specifically relevant to the current
> project administrators, Chris, Paul and me.
> 
>> git is dead easy.  Really.  If you're going to do something
>> dangerous,
>> you almost always can take a backup and put it back if you break
>> things (it's just a directory on disk in many ways).  Give it a go.
>>
>> Also, if other koha developers had been using git and the
>> cvs-compatibility commands, we could all have been working through
>> this Savannah downtime.
>
> It's not that git, arch, etc., are hard to use ... it's the 
> concept and management of a distributed version control system,
> and the lack of a clear leader in this arena that leads me to
> conclude that DVC is not quite there yet. We don't have much
> bandwidth to devote to managing a version control system in this
> community, I don't want to hop from DVC to DVC as I've seen so
> many other projects do. Again, this is my opinion, I'm not speaking
> for the Koha community or for Paul / Chris ... I'd love to hear
> everyone else's thoughts on the matter.

There is a clear leader and it is "git."  Linus looked at all of the 
DVCs and found them wanting, so he wrote git.  Since then it has been 
enhanced tremendously and is being used by a huge number of people 
developing linux as well as those that are compiling their own kernels 
but not actively developing linux.  There are other projects using git 
as well: I'm aware of x.org and u-boot and I know there are more.

>>> Q: why google instead of gna.org, etc.
>>> A: hosting at a project like gna.org, could result in the
>>> same situation we're in now in a few months. With Google,
>>> we get a Subversion implementation backed by Google's
>>> massively scalable, highly available storage technology,
>>> and some of the best sys admins in the world.
>> And backed by one of the least-loved corporations in the world today,
>> boycotted by a wide range of groups, from privacy campaigners,
>> through
>> some private authors (after copyright problems), through to Students
>> for a Free Tibet.  I thought Google was even contraversial among
>> librarians (despite offering some good ideas that we should adopt),
>> but maybe I misunderstood.

Well, perhaps a distant third after Microsoft and Walmart.  :-)

IMHO, most of the people boycotting Google are doing it more to grind 
their own axe than because there is a substantial problem with Google. 
You get a lot more press by announcing you are boycotting Google than by 
announcing you are boycotting iServ.

[snip]

>> Excuse my wariness on this, but I've seen good hosting services go
>> strange in the past, changing project administrators and other tricks
>> themselves.  I've no idea whether Google would do that, but I also
>> can't see what we could do to them if they did.
> I can appreciate the wariness; whatever decision we make, it's clear
> we need to mirror the repository to ensure survival.
> 
> I'd like to hear more input from others, do MJ's concerns resonate?

No major resonance here.

Best regards,
gvb