[gdal-dev] [update] Re: Travis CI continuous integration service for GDAL

[Etienne Tourigny]

Hi Even,

the main advantage of github is that you can manage patches/pull
requests more easily, and it's easy for someone to setup a fork with
substantial changes, and anyone can pull that fork and try it without
much hassle.
The other way of doing it with trac/svn is to upload patches to
tickets, and then more patches after review etc.... Which works fine,
but a bit clumsy compared to github forks and pull requests.


On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 4:24 PM, Even Rouault
<even.rouault at mines-paris.org> wrote:
> Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 15:48:48, Etienne Tourigny a écrit :
>> IMHO git (with github) is a great platform for collaboration.  You
>> might find yourself swamped with pull requests though...
>
> I'd be curious to know if the current use of SVN really deters people from
> contributing to GDAL, whereas they would contribute more actively if GIT was
> used as the prime VCS (*).

You are right, it might deter some devs, but I'm not sure if the
balance would be positive or negative in that view.

>
> My feeling is that the main barrier to contribution lies more in understanding
> how the source works rather than the tools around.
>
> Anyway, whatever the VCS, as you underlined, you still need competent eyes to
> review, comment on, fix by themselves the patch or ask the contributor to do
> changes, apply, or reject patches... Trac has already such patches waiting.

I'd also say - if it works don't fix it.  Transitioning to git(hub) is
certainly possible (QGIS managed to get it working well), but it will
entain some productivity loss in the short term.

But my experience with github (for QGIS) has been overall a more fluid
one than with svn (for gdal).

I even did some collaborative work last year in gdal using github as
the shared repos, and pushing to svn but that was a bit clumsy (the
git-svn part) and I have stopped using that approach.

>
> But as a SVN committer, my opinion is obviously biased since contributing is
> of course more straighforward than for a non-GDAL committer. GIT has certainly
> a more egalitarian approach (everyone can commit or fork), although that
> someone that hasn't push rights can only send pull requests to the main
> repository.

I'd say svn is fine for core devs, not optimal for occasional submitters.

>
> My knowledge of GIT is rather limited, but, for a GDAL contributor without
> commit (SVN)/push(GIT) rights to the main repository, what improvements would
> a full move to GIT would offer with respect to the current git-svn mirroring ?

a more seamless flow between the dev's work and pushes to the main source.

As far as I can tell, the git part of your setup is just for the
continuous builds right? In fact git is used as a read-only, so I
don't see how having a git mirror helps contributing code.

cheers
Etienne

>
> Best regards,
>
> Even
>
> (*) What would be interesting to know also is : wouldn't a move to GIT deter
> current GDAL contributors ?