[wp-hackers] Switching from SVN

Fri Dec 10 00:29:12 UTC 2010

Made me laugh out loud too. After a semi crappy day of clients that was 
awesome. Thanks Mike. Since it's on list now anyways I'll respond at 
least initially below,

To answer some of the questions. No I haven't been a core commiter on a 
project. I have contributed to RVM a few times. Specifically I've 
contributed to their site function and documentation. I've also forked 
and sent a pull request for a project management system that escapes me 
right now as well as using it (for the first time) in the RailsRumble 
'09 (with no command line experience and as the designer). I also use it 
regularly in teams for any Rails work I do the frontend on.

I use Git daily as my version control software for all projects.

My issues with Subversion, which may inform anyways, start at I don't 
get it. While the patch system may seem totally understandable to some 
coming at it from the Git mindset it makes little sense to me. To my 
mind it makes more sense that I clone the whole repository and make my 
changes. If it's useful I issue a pull request that the core team sees. 
They can easily see a diff on that and decide if it's good code (we're 
not all like Otto and write it perfect first :).

In larger Open Source projects (I talk with the Datamapper lead 
regularly) people often make a few commits then bundle it all into one 
before the pull request. This does put responsibility on the person 
doing the pull request. In Datamapper the lead doesn't even look at a 
patch without documentation and an explanation of the change. Yes he 
might miss a patch but we only have so much time.

My general project workflow (WP site dev) is to start a git branch 
'development' and work in that. As a portion of work is done I merge it 
into my local master and then deploy (if it's just me) or issue a pull 
request. If I'm working on a larger item (like modding wp-cycle 
recently) I'll name the branch after the feature then merge to 
development then master.

Git is also way faster. Though I've never used anything else I sat with 
a programmer last night who was saying 'Wow' every few seconds at the 
speed of Git. He's been a CVS, SVN guy for years.

The best article I read on Git was:
http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

After reading that it really started to make sense.

Not sure if that specifically answers any questions but if someone is 
interested I could put you in touch with the project lead from 
Datamapper. I've known him for years and doubt he'll mind talking about 
their process on Github and why he chooses it. He's a seriously smart 
dude (scouted by Twitter last year) with lots of experience.

If anyone wants to ask more question on or off list feel free.

Otto wrote:
> LOL! :-D
>
> I'm not against it, per se. I've just never understood git, really.
> That's all I'm saying. I find it confusing and weird. A good
> explanation of it might be helpful, but the ones I've seen are all
> confusing to me.
>
> -Otto
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 5:52 PM, Mike Schinkel
> <mikeschinkel at newclarity.net>  wrote:
>> Well, that was embarasing...
>>
>> On Dec 9, 2010, at 6:50 PM, Mike Schinkel wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Curtis:
>>>
>>> Off List.  I'm really intrigued by what you are saying.
>>>
>>> Have you worked on other open source platforms that used this?  Or do you have other experience with it?  Ever been a core committer on another project?
>>>
>>> With Otto in such a position of authority in the community and him being so against it (which is typical for Otto; if it's not his use-case he'll do his best to block it.)  I wonder if we could create another plugin repository whose goal would be to prove the concept?  If so, any ideas how you might go about putting together such an alternate infrastructure?
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance for entertaining this "what if" exploration.
>>>
>>> -MIke
>>>
>>> On Dec 9, 2010, at 12:37 PM, Curtis McHale wrote:
>>>
>>>> Could we form a short term team to work on helping plugin authors get their plugins into the system?
>>>>
>>>> Eric Mann wrote:
>>>>> It might weed out those plug-ins that are obsolete and abandoned by the
>>>>> original developers.  But some plug-ins aren't being "actively" developed
>>>>> because they still work and don't need any new features.  Forcing the devs
>>>>> to resubmit a plug-in that hasn't changed in a year or two would be a major
>>>>> PITA for some.
>>>>>
>>>>> On the other hand, maybe culling inactive plug-ins from the repository by
>>>>> forcing a massive resubmit would be a good thing.  We'd have a better idea
>>>>> of how many plug-ins are available based on how many are resubmitted.  But
>>>>> I'd still want to keep the old SVN repo available *somewhere* for archive
>>>>> purposes ...
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 9:20 AM, William Davis<will.davis at gmail.com>    wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Just wanted to add that there's no reason the plugins would have to be
>>>>>>> done at the same time as WordPress itself. I'm sure that'll be a huge
>>>>>>> undertaking.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Even just offering an official git mirror of the main repository would
>>>>>>> be a good place to start, so that people don't have to maintain their
>>>>>>> own. Then eventually the git mirror can become the official repository,
>>>>>>> or create a new one, whichever.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We couldn't find a git mirror that was up-to-date _and_ had tags so we
>>>>>>> had to make our own: https://github.com/dxw/wordpress
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm sure this won't be popular, but what if plugin authors had to resubmit
>>>>>> their plugins? It would probably help weed out a ton of old plugins that are
>>>>>> no longer relevant.
>>>>>>
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>>>> --
>>>> Curtis McHale
>>>> SFNdesign
>>>> 604.751.3482
>>>> http://curtismchale.ca
>>>> http://twitter.com/curtismchale
>>>> http://ca.linkedin.com/in/curtismchale
>>>>
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-- 
Curtis McHale
SFNdesign
604.751.3482
http://curtismchale.ca
http://twitter.com/curtismchale
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/curtismchale