On Mar 19, 2010, at 4:28 PM, Yang Tse wrote:
I strongly believe that GIT makes occasional contributors disappear.
I'm very glad to see you're concerned about occasional contributors, but how the version control tool affects them is really more a matter of policy than technology. If the project requires all patches to be created with git-format-patch or via remote pull from the contributor's repository on github or elsewhere, or if the configuration and build tools assume git is available, then yes, you block people from participating who for whatever reason don't have git or don't know how to use it.
But if git-friendly submissions are preferred though not required, there's no reduction in accessibility to anyone who isn't git-savvy. git am will actually do a decent job with most e-mail containing patches created with good old-fashioned GNU diff -pu. It's a bit less forgiving (doesn't have fuzz, refuses to correct foreign line ending differences, whines about trailing whitespace), but it usually works. If it doesn't, there's always GNU patch followed by git commit --author.
It *is* important to make the source is available in some fashion that doesn't require git. github provides snapshots, but the latest commit ID is only available from the archive filename, not anywhere in the contents of the snapshot. Creating dependencies on the commit ID in the build toolchain is best avoided, though can be dealt with in various ways.
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