Re: [gentoo-dev] overlay support current proposal?

[Ryan Phillips <rphillips@gentoo.org>]

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Stuart Herbert <stuart.herbert@gmail.com> said:
> Thanks for the summary.  I think that's a fair assessment of where we are at.
> 
> The offered software will be trac, svn, and moinmoin.  I'm going to
> look at darcs, and with the help of the haskell team and infra
> determine if we can support it or not.  No-one has expressed a
> preference for a different distributed VCS instead of darcs.
> 
> Just one more thing ...

It sounds to me like the overlays would benefit of using git/cogito.
The Linux Kernel uses this DVCS to full affect. Pulling changes from
other repositories, and even receiving email patches pushed from
people not having their own official repository (or repository http or
ssh accessible).  Any git checkout is a branch, so its easy to stay up
to date with the mainline tree and still work on personal branches.

We need to pick one VCS and only one.  Having multiple systems
requires users to install multiple applications and learn each one.
Not all of them are easy to pick up.  Plus, it would be nice to be
able to merge from the overlays to the Portage trunk.

I think git/cogito might be the solution.  It works for a highly
distributed kernel development, which would be similar to the way the
overlays would work.  Gentoo User A would checkout the kde overlay,
make some changes, cg-commit them to their own overlay, and submit the
patches upstream via an email requesting a pull, or emailing them
patches directly with a git-mkmail command.

An alternative to git would be using subversion.  

*** The main portage tree should be switched away from CVS. ***
There are much better alternatives (svn or git) to use.

CVS is our bottleneck when it comes to development and our users too.
What I see is that the overlays are trying to create branches, when
they should not need to.  Making a PHP or Gnome v2000 overlay is
ridiculous, since a branch is almost free using subversion.  There are
more advantages, like making sure the rest of the tree doesn't break,
and when the branch is stable for package.mask or arch masking then
merge the branch to trunk.  The main tree could live within subversion
(or whatever VCS we choose) as a branch.  It would be easy to keep the
branch up to date with trunk, and then merge the changes to the live
branch.  Major changes to the tree need to be done in a branch where
it should be done.

Overlays should be used only for small additions/changes/or tests.  It
feels like the overlays are already trying to create branches, when in
fact, they would not have to if the main tree was _not_ in CVS.

There are advantages to subversion and advantages to git.  I propose
picking one (I vote for subversion) to use for the overlays.  I also
believe that CVS is now hindering us from reaching our goals as a
project.

Comments?

-Ryan

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