Re: [boost] [Git] Moving beyond arm waving?

Subject: Re: [boost] [Git] Moving beyond arm waving?
From: Dave Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-02-03 16:31:19

At Thu, 3 Feb 2011 14:00:50 -0700,
Belcourt, K. Noel wrote:
> 
> 
> On Feb 3, 2011, at 1:48 PM, John Wiegley wrote:
> 
> > Klaim - Joël Lamotte <mjklaim_at_[hidden]> writes:
> >
> >> I've read that a lot of project switching to (any DSVC) did that to  not have
> >> to hack the conversion tools too much.  But it depends on the real  needs
> >> regarding the source history.
> >
> > Part of the reason we're putting this much effort into it is that we  want a
> > process which split Boost up into submodules during the migration  process,
> > while preserving as much history within each separate submodule as  possible.
> > There's just no tool out there that does that right now.  So since  we needed
> > to write a tool anyway, why not solve the whole problem.
> 
> 
> I haven't been following this closely so ignore if you've already  discussed /
> decided this.
> 
> I'd much prefer to leave the repo structure unchanged and migrate  directly into
> git "as is".  Restructure the repo into submodules after  we've made the
> transition to git.  It will be much easier to  restructure the repo with
> everything already in git.  

That's essentially exactly what John is doing.  There's no tool that faithfully
does an "as is" translation of a history as complex as Boost's.

> There's two upsides, we lose no commit history and it only perturbs one aspect
> at a time (first give people chance to use same repo layout using new tool,
> followed by a restructure of the repo into submodules using the new tool).  I
> worry about perturbing too many variables at once.

I worry about having too many separate perturbations.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com