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

Subject: Re: [boost] [Git] Moving beyond arm waving?
From: John Wiegley (johnw_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-02-03 17:01:33

"Belcourt, K. Noel" <kbelco_at_[hidden]> writes:

> 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.  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.

A few of us have been discussing this at length off-list.  There are arguments
on both sides, so I can't say which is truly best except I think we may prefer
to get all this disruption over in one big step:

 1. Move to Git, preserving monolithic history in a "boost-history" repo.
 2. Separate the projects into submodules governed by a "boost" super-project.
 3. Switch to CMake as the build process for these submodules.

We could certainly stagger these changes -- and there are advantages to doing
so -- but it means damaging the Boost development process in a big way on
three separate occasions.  That would really hurt progress, I think, more than
getting it all over with at once.

Also, you will not lose any commit history.  Even when we move to submodules,
there will always "boost-history" to represent exactly the state of Subversion
on the date we made the change.  We should probably even keep a read-only
Subversion repo around for a while, just in case.

John