Re: [gentoo-dev] CIA replacement

[Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 1:29 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Rafael Goncalves Martins
> <rafaelmartins@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Maybe someone with good cvs knowledge can contribute a hook for irker
>> [1], so we can have #gentoo-commits flooding our irc clients again! :)
>
> Why exactly are we still using cvs?  Rather than building enhancements
> for cvs, why not just migrate everything to git, and spend our time
> building the git hooks/etc necessary to make this work?
>
> Looking at the tracker [1], we need a pre-upload hook (I'm not quite
> sure why), an rsync conversion script, the ability to validate the
> converted tree, and documentation.  There is still an open bug for
> commit signing, and I'm not quite sure why as this was implemented.
>
> It seems like a lot has already been done with validation.  Checking
> the active tree is pretty trivial - just compare the trees and they
> should be the same.  I guess we need to check history, but it seems to
> me like the risk of problems is low, and if we just keep a backup of
> the cvs repository if there is ever a concern about who made some
> commit 5 years ago we can always dig it up.
>
> It really seems to me like little remains to be done here.  Mostly we
> just need somebody to push a decision on things like workflow.  A few
> of the bugs have comments like "no sense working on this with other
> stuff still needed" - which seems to be outdated thinking with so
> little left to do.
>
> Am I missing some big concern that just isn't obvious in these bugs?
>
> I also fear that we're refusing to take action on a great solution
> because it isn't a perfect solution.  Nobody in the world is using
> tree-signing with git, and we aren't really using it in cvs either.
> We now have the ability to do it with git, but depending on workflow
> 3rd-party signatures might not end up in the history of head, or we
> might not be able to verify them in an automated fashion.  Honestly, I
> think the appropriate response here is whoop-de-doo.  We can't do any
> of that stuff with cvs, but moving to git would have a lot of other
> benefits.  We can always change our processes later once somebody has
> a solution for the signing problem.  Right now we're making do without
> it on cvs, and so is every other project using git.  We can also
> continue to sign manifests as a workaround, which is what we'll be
> doing anyway if we never migrate to git.
>
> The git migration just strikes me as one of those cases where anybody
> is free to come up with a reason not to use something, but nobody has
> to defend keeping the status quo.  I think the question isn't whether
> there is anything wrong with using git, but whether the problems with
> git are worse than the problems we already have.
>
> But, hey, if somebody wants to write an irc bot that posts cvs
> commits, knock yourself out.
>
> Rich
>
> [1] - https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333531
>

I don't know to what depth this has been discussed in the past, but if
you use git, you also get an HTTP transport, which has a useful
feature: You could simplify updating the tree on end-users's machines
by using caching proxy servers (operating in accelerator mode) on the
various mirrors.

Those of us who have our own, local caching proxy servers (I have
squid running on my network gateway) can reduce the network load even
further by getting cache hits on our local network before even making
queries outside our network. (Personally, I find this a far easier
thing to maintain and do debugging reasoning on than, e.g. sharing a
network mount or running a local rsync server managed by a cron job.)

-- 
:wq