On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:21 AM, Bill Hart<[email protected]> wrote: > > I watched Linus' video. I can honestly say I am less impressed with > Git than I was when I started watching it. > > If you listen carefully to his anecdotes, they pretty much contradict > what he is trying to get across. He describes this utopian world where > everyone has their own git repository of the linux kernel. People are > all pulling changes from other people they trust and the Linux kernel > gets better.
Thanks for finally watching the video. I'm sorry it didn't get through to you at all, but that's life. Anyway, all I can say is that Linus's isn't describing some "utopian fantasy world" that he made up -- he did create the biggest and most successful open source software community project in history, after all. Anyway, I won't personally bring up the use of distributed source control management for MPIR again, since it clearly doesn't suite your style. -- William > > In reality something else happens. There is one central repo anyone > cares about, Linus'. The only person with commit access to that repo > is Linus. People are basically submitting patches to his lieutenants > and he is then pulling changes from them into his central repo when he > is ready, or he would, except one of his lieutenants doesn't use Git. > > I actually found this whole thing disturbing. Now instead of there > being a central repo which a number of trusted developers have equal > commit access to, there is one person's repo which is more important > than everyone else's. In order to get code into that repo, one has to > get it into one of a number of other repos managed by other people. > Then one starts dealing with merges. > > The only benefits I am seeing here (and I am not denying Git has those > advantages) is that one can make multiple commits to one's local repo > before posting patches to be imported into the main repo and that > working on a branch is slightly easier in that it doesn't need to > touch the main repo. > > If you look at the way the parallel OpenMP branch of MPIR has been > worked on, however, it isn't that much different. Mark Glisse and I > have been posting our code online (as we'd have to do with Git) and > "pulling" each others changes and trying them out. We have been > working in incompatible changes, in the sense that merging doesn't > make sense (yet). And neither of us is happy enough with our code to > commit to the central repo, so the code has actually stayed out of > there. > > One thing Git would have done for us is when Marc's machine in France > went down, I wouldn't have had to wait for him to email me his code > again, because I would have it somewhere in my Git repo. Of course > this was just an oversight on my part. I accidentally overwrote the > file Marc sent me. Though I am not denying Git would have helped with > that. > > Anyhow, I still feel Git is the best solution out there. There are now > 32 and 64 bit TortoiseGit clients for Windows. Git is written in C, > which is a language I understand, and it was written with performance > in mind. It is supposedly an order of magnitude faster than > alternatives, and it the power to do exceedingly complicated things, > such as keep track of functions moving between files. For my money, it > is the only way to go. Having said that, I am sceptical it is going to > make much of a difference for us until we grow as a project beyond > about 10 regular contributors. > > Bill. -- William Stein Associate Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mpir-devel" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mpir-devel?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
