[OLPC-devel] OLPC development project organization. Status calls? Other techniques?

[David Woodhouse]

On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 14:16 -0400, Jim Gettys wrote:
> 4) What should our preferred SCM be?  
> 
> Git is clearly going to be used for kernel work, and possibly for X
> Window System work (some sub-projects have converted over to using it in
> the X community)..  
> 
> Ivan Krstic highly prefers mercurial for most uses, and is able to give
> some cogent arguments he can elaborate on. I detest CVS, and will veto
> *starting* any projects using it... The RH folks have been using
> mercurial for sugar, and are more or less happy.
> 
> I suggest we start new projects using a common SCM, rather than a random
> assortment, 

Absolutely. It makes no sense to use more than one version control
system unless a certain one of them has an _absolutely_ essential
feature which one of our sub-projects requires.

Git _does_ have just such an essential feature for our kernel work -- it
allows us to make repositories which can be pulled directly by Linus
into the official kernel tree.

> and unless people object now, we'll use mercurial for our
> new projects.  Obviously, existing projects we choose to host can do
> what they want. 

Why Mercurial? What is _so_ much better about it vs. git that it makes
it worth having two version control systems in operation instead of only
one? What's the killer feature?

Unless there is such a reason, it would be better for us to stick to a
_single_ version control system across the board.

Pandering to users' personal preferences for a version control system is
what leads to the 'random assortment' that you correctly say we should
be avoiding. Let's nip that tendency in the bud right at the start,
rather than doubling our selecting of version control systems from one
(git) to two (git+hg). 

Preferences like that are largely just a case of what the user is used
to, anyway -- so they're fairly volatile. Version control systems are
like MUAs in that respect.

I didn't like git very much when I first used it, but I can deal with it
now that it's matured somewhat, and now that I'm more used to it (and
now that emacs has vc-git stuff too). I certainly can't see the point in
starting to use anything _else_.

-- 
dwmw2