It's been loosely proposed that we switch away from SVN into a
different system. This probably warrants some discussion to a) figure
out if we want to move, and b) *if* we want to move, which system
should we move to? One has system been proposed: Mercurial -- several
OMPI developers are using it with good success. I know that some OMPI
developers use Git, too. Are there other systems that we should
consider?
Primary reasons for doing the switch are:
- distributed repositories are attractive/useful
- git/Mercurial branching and merging are *way* better than SVN
--> note that SVN v1.5 is supposed to be *much* better than v1.4
Primary reasons for staying with SVN are:
- aside from branching/merging, SVN works pretty well
- branching/merging is not "bad" in SVN (but if you used git/hg, you
know it can be much, much better)
This is likely not a near-term issue, but we might as well start some
low-frequency discussions about it. Several issues would need to be
figured out if we decide to switch away from SVN:
- integration with trac
- integration with user/account management
- how to import all the SVN history to the new system
- ...and probably others
This might make a good topic for the next post-MPI-Forum meeting in
Chicago: have someone stand up and give a 30 min overview of each
system (Mercurial, Git, ...?) and we can have developer-level
discussions (and hands-on testing) of the various systems to see what
we like / don't like.
If this sounds like a reasonable idea, let's figure out who wants to
speak about the systems, etc.
--
Jeff Squyres
Cisco Systems
