[wp-hackers] Switching from SVN

[Jacob Santos]

I apologize. I should have clarified. The original goal of the thread was to
somewhat persuade WordPress Foundation to switch to Git or another
distributed VCS. In this it fails since it only briefly touches on the crux
of the issue that core commit team and core contributors have. I guess part
of the reason was the tangents about the differences between SVN and GIT.

I know of only one of the Automattic team that is already on Github and I
suspect that the only way there is going to be a change is if the core
commit team and the WordPress Foundation decides that the benefits of GIT is
worth spending the time developing the tools for providing support. I also
think the problem with the thread is assuming that SVN has to be removed
from the development cycle. GIT could be added for those who want to fork
and provide patches in that fashion. The first step is to see how well the
SVN-GIT tool works on Github and also the challenges for branching and
merging based on the SVN-GIT tool.

Oh, as an aside, it might help to think of distributed repositories as
branches. If you consider that the repository you are cloning from to be
"trunk" and your clone to be a branch of Trunk, then I think it might make
more sense. If you handle distributed clones like you would handle branches
in SVN, then it makes it a bit more easy to understand. It is just that
everyone that works with the "Trunk" has their own branch and maintains it.
When they are finished with that they are working on or what to move their
features back into the main development for other people to see, then they
merge (push) back into "Trunk" and other people merge Trunk (pull) back into
their branches to stay up-to-date. Whereas with SVN this is a PITA to do and
handle, it is a feature that is built into distributed VCS.

I really think that with GIT, it commits smaller diffs as well as doing
comparisons on diffs. I've only ever had one conflict with GIT and was
surprised when the conflict only included one line whereas the diff itself
spanned multiple lines. In SVN the conflict would have been the 3 or 4 lines
and in GIT it was only 1. That for me is what sold GIT. GIT was built on
merging and branching and that is its strength. By SVNs very nature it does
not want you to branch except for the most extreme situations.


On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 12:46 AM, Mike Schinkel <mikeschinkel at newclarity.net
> wrote:

> On Dec 11, 2010, at 1:19 AM, Jacob Santos wrote:
> > Therefore, this entire thread is pointless.
>
> It wasn't pointless. It educated several people, including myself on
> nuances of the various VCS that (at least I've) been struggling to
> understand for years.  And everyone has been mostly civil.
>
> I think it was one of the best high-volume threads we've had in a long
> time.
>
> FWIW.
>
> -Mike
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