Hi Ross, answers inline. > However, don't let this divert the community here from making a case > for sticking with GitHub whilst being in the incubator. So far no-one > has answered my questions. > > Why is Callback different from all the other projects in the ASF?
PhoneGap has 3 years of history in Git and on Github, Its where our community is. This is not unique. CouchDB is there as well as many thousands of free software projects. Moving to SVN would damage our workflow and our community involvement. As mentioned earlier in the thread, we have many contributors across many continents with many differing codebases (PhoneGap uses C++, Objective C, two flavours of Java, JavaScript). Have a such a distributed team means there are advantages for distributed RCS. We *could* use SVN but it would be clumsy, more error prone and slow us down. We're not interested in slowing down. > Why should a special case be made for Callback? > Saying "git is better" is not enough. We've had that conversation > hundreds of times already. This isn't about being a special case, but it is the second project at ASF built using Git for all the technical benefits that we do not have to enumerate for you again. > The fact is Git is better at some things > and worse at others. What is it worst at? I think it might help to enumerate some benefits: - Being centralized isn't a feature for revision control in a free software project: its a bug. It is more difficult to collaborate on many disparate branches. - SVN merging is terrible compared to Git and its far slower, more error prone. Cheap, fast branching makes for better revision history and quicker commits. - Git is faster. The feedback loop is tighter. Cutting code is more quickly done. So, there you have it: Git is faster and less error prone. Win. > It is simply a different technology. I agree! Its just RCS and from an ASF perspective it should not be a concern. Given that all technology eventually deprecates as new technology comes about, it would be better for the longevity of the ASF to adopt an agnostic stance and support the RCS choices a project, their community, prefers to use. We need to use an RCS and we need to keep our IP noses clean. Its about what we're doing, and not necessarily how we get there. At least, this is how I view it should be. > What I, as a > mentor of this project, want to know is why I should change my opinion > and fight for Callback to be allowed to stay on GitHub in the interim. It should remain on Github beyond the interim and we should merge code from there appropriately. A repo on Github is no different from a repo on a committers harddrive with the exception that it is indexed for the world to discover and contribute to not to mention that laundry list of community features Github supports that a blind repo on a harddrive, or the ASF, does not. There is no technical difference, nor legal reasoning, why having the code on any harddrive would matter. Its the moment of merging into ASF infrastructure that is crucially important and we are very committed (pun partially intended) to doing things right. > I also want to know what will happen if Git is never adopted at the > ASF. >From my perspective the ASF will languish over time, lose traction, developers, committers, and support from the larger free software community that has moved on from SVN to newer more technically superior systems. The ASF is not SVN. It transcends the concepts of revision control and provides the tool for a free software to remain free, and open. I have not heard any reasoning yet other than its current policy which I view with optimism. We will work with you to change that policy. If our path to doing that is getting docs written from the Couch project then we will immediately begin doing that / participate there. Let me know if we can do anything else to expedite things. (Thank you again for staying tough on us Ross: we appreciate the help in mentorship, and keeping us honest with ourselves and our reasoning.)
