Re: [Boost-users] What's happened to Ryppl?

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] What's happened to Ryppl?
From: Dean Michael Berris (mikhailberis_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-28 14:01:33

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 2:46 AM, John Maddock <boost.regex_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> I still haven't heard from the git proponents, what's wrong with using
> git-svn to manage a local - i.e. distributed - git repository, and then
> periodically pushing changes to SVN. Â In other words working with git just
> as you normally would, except for having to type "git svn" from time to
> time? Â This isn't a rhetorical question BTW, I've never used either git or
> git-svn, so I clearly don't know what I'm missing ;-)
>

This doesn't change the Boost central repo which is actually one of
the reasons why the current process doesn't scale well.

The idea really (partially hashed out here, still a work in progress:
https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/DistributedDevelopmentProcess)
at least when I first brought it up is that we should be able to get
multiple distributions, allow the independent but coordinated
development of individual libraries, allow contributors to get into
the game easier, and rely on an organic web of trust to allow for
self-organization of sub-communities and a larger Boost community.

Git is part of that idea mostly because the barrier to entry for
potential contributors is 0. Anybody can absolutely clone the git
repository, get development going locally, adding their contributions
and submitting pull requests easily. The pull requests can go to
maintainers, co-maintainers, the mailing list at large, or someone
who's already a contributor to shepherd changes in.

This allows all the work to happen in a distributed manner, with
release management largely a matter of packaging publicly published
versions of libraries that are tested to work well together in a
single distribution. I just cannot imagine how this would be done with
anything other than git that integrates the web of trust, organic
fan-out growth of the self-organizing community, and rich set of tools
and practices supporting it. Of course it's not just the git thing,
it's also a workflow thing, and the distributed workflow along with
the distributed version control system go hand-in-hand.

> John.
>
> PS, just looked at the git website, and it appears that us Windows users are
> restricted to either Cygwin or MSys builds? Â If so that appears to be a
> major drawback IMO.... OK I see there's a TortoiseGit, but it looks
> distinctly immature at first glance, and still depends on MSys (i.e. no easy
> integrated install)?

MSysGit is the best Git I've seen on Windows so far. I used it
extensively on the command-line and had 0 problems working with it
using the tutorials for Git on Linux.

YMMV though.

HTH

-- 
Dean Michael Berris
about.me/deanberris