[Koha-devel] Re: distributed VCS, some thoughts.

[Jerry Van Baren]

Well, it is hard to be definitive without a clue of your current 
development methodologies, but I would speculate that it will take 
somewhere from little more to a lot less time than CVS/SVN with multiple 
writers (note that you can still have multiple writers with git, it just 
is not generally useful since everybody has their own copy of the 
repository).

If the code in CVS never gets messed up because of multiple people 
committing incompatible changes, it will take minimal extra time for 
everybody upstream to pull changes.

On the other hand, if ever you get a mess due to multiple people 
committing incompatible stuff in CVS, you've just saved every bit of 
time that the extra pulling cost.  I suspect this has already happened 
at least once. :-/

I tried to outline a "pull" scenario in a previous email to illustrate 
that it is NOT painful.  Doing a pull is a single command you run that 
takes seconds to run and you do it occasionally (on demand, when you 
feel like it, once a day, once a week, whatever makes sense).  It is the 
same level of effort as doing a "svn update".  In addition, if you use 
local source control (maintaining a local copy of the cvs/svn repository 
to track local changes or using RCS locally) *which all developers 
should do*, git is a huge improvement.

All of the developers will benefit (save time) with git, so the net time 
savings equation is positive, regardless.  There is a learning curve to 
climb, but it isn't very steep and the rewards are pretty good.
RCS - gets the job done but cannot share the changes
CVS - gets the job done over the wire, allowing sharing (Pinto)
SVN - puts a turbocharger in the Pinto (Pangra)
git - everybody makes their own clone of the Lamborghini

Reference pointers for the non-US residents (and youngsters ;-):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercar>

Best regards,
gvb


Kyle Hall wrote:
> I think everyone would agree that more checking of code is good. As long 
> as you and Paul and Josh are willing to put in a bit more time, I 
> imagine everyone will be all for it. I think the big question is *how 
> much* more time will it require from you guys. I think only the people 
> currently using git will be able to help us answer us.
> 
> Kyle
> 
> On 3/16/07, *Chris Cormack* <chris at katipo.co.nz 
> <mailto:chris at katipo.co.nz>> wrote:
> 
>     On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 03:04:30PM -0400, Kyle Hall said:
>      > Thank you for illuminating us on the ways of git ; )
>      > It seems from you're description if there are lot's of Kyle's,
>     that the
>      > likes of Chris and Paul are in for more work that previously. I,
>     on the
>      > other hand, would be effected little.
>      >
>     Speaking as Chris
> 
>     I don't think this is nessecarily a bad thing, a bit more checking as
>     code comes in can save a bunch of time in the future. I guess what I'm
>     saying is we should be doing something like this currently anyway, at
>     least we should be sanity checking code as its committed. We wouldnt
>     end up with dual implementation of the same feature, and some of the
>     duplicate code we now have.
> 
>     Chris
> 
> 
>     --
>     Chris Cormack                                                    
>     Programmer
>     027 4500 789                                       Katipo
>     Communications Ltd
>     chris at katipo.co.nz
>     <mailto:chris at katipo.co.nz>                                          www.katipo.co.nz
>     <http://www.katipo.co.nz>
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> Crawford County Federated Library System
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