On Sun, 2008-12-21 at 20:12 -0500, Ilya Sterin wrote:

> Are you talking about binary releases?  Or are you storing
> dependencies there as well?  I wonder the benefits of storing
> dependencies, especially if they are resolved at compile time.  Of
> course releases that include dependencies must include them.  For
> releases though, I'm thinking whether something like S3 would be a
> better solution.  It's not free, but it would be a few dollars per
> month maximum for the amount that's needed I believe.  There might be
> some other free service out there that offers geographic content
> distribution.

The idea is to remove the need to store jars and other compiled
artefacts in the Gradle source repository.  By providing a Gradle target
to download all  needed dependencies when the Gradle source is
downloaded, the user has all the dependencies stored in the local Ivy
cache.  This brings huge benefits to to the management of the source
code using a DVCS.

> > We had quite a discussion on whether to use git or bazaar. We have decided
> > to give bazaar a first try, not git. Russel Winder was making the case for
> > bazaar. And to me bazaar looks more user friendly and high level than git.
> > We use launchpad for hosting the different feature branches. I hope we get a
> > good process going for all this.
> 
> Yeah, afraid I can't really provide any feedback on this.  My
> understanding from doing quick a vs. b readings is that git is more
> advanced and bazaar and mercurial offer good enough DVC that although
> might not have all the advanced features of git, they are a bit more
> user friendly, at least from the standpoint of someone just coming to
> DVCs.  I switched to git for personal use, mostly because I loved
> github and don't ever want to host my own repo again.  I also looked
> at launchpad, but I'm not sure why, their web site works ridiculously
> slow.  Can't really blame it on RoR, since github is RoR as well and
> it very fast.  I saw similar complaints on the web about launchpad, so
> I know it's not just me.

I think it is a bad misunderstanding that Git is more "advanced" and
Bazaar and Mercurial are only "good enough".  Git is certainly more
flexible at the repository level in that it has more commands for doing
more things.  However this means that much more damage can be done far
more easily by a slight slip.  Git has come a long way in terms of user
interaction over the last few years but it remains a very low-level,
very "techies" system.

Bazaar, Mercurial and Git (despite all being DVCS) have very different
models of repository and storage.  I haven't done as much work with
Mercurial as I would like, but coming form a Bazaar/Git background it is
difficult to justify trying Mercurial!

Having said this Gradle (and Gant) has a specific driving issue:  the
mainline needs to be stored in a Subversion repository.  Mercurial does
not as yet (but it will) have the ability to read and write commits from
and to a Subversion repository.  Bazaar and Git can both do this.  As a
Subversion client, Git is actually very good, as indeed is Bazaar, but
Git probably just wins.  However, this is just as a personal Subversion
client, because of all the rebasing, it becomes essentially impossible
to work with the clone/branch as a DVCS entity.

Bazaar (but not Git) allows the whole branch including metadata to be
stored in a Subversion repository.  This means that the Subversion
stored mainline can be a Bazaar branch and so the whole DVCS approach
can be used without the need for rebasing except where desired in the
usual DVCS way.

I find GitHub interesting but not really centred on group collaboration,
it is focused on a model of individuals only.  The Launchpad idea of
supporting individuals and groups with projects works better for me.
The real question is how Codehaus will evolve, indeed will it evolve at
all?

If you saw problems with Launchpad, did you report them?

> Great to hear about the move to DVC though.  I'm sure what ever the
> decision is, it'll be better than centralized version control.

Definitely :-)

-- 
Russel.
====================================================
Dr Russel Winder                 Partner

Concertant LLP                   t: +44 20 7585 2200, +44 20 7193 9203
41 Buckmaster Road,              f: +44 8700 516 084
London SW11 1EN, UK.             m: +44 7770 465 077

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