Barry Smith writes: > To users of petsc-dev, > > I promised more details on the planned change and why we are making > them. > > The plan is to move petsc-dev over to the git repository system > (remaining on bitbucket.org so no new accounts are needed) with a simple and > slow transition from Mecurial and allowing people to change their workflows > slowly and easily and NOT to drop a totally new system onto everyone at the > same time. Thus on Tuesday we will be moving all the data over to git and > providing access from bitbucket.org with BOTH hg and git, you will not need > to switch over to git on Tuesday and in fact we recommend not switching to > git immediately but continuing to use hg (on the new repository) until we > have the git process documented and can help people with it. On Tuesday we > will be sending out the URL of the new hg repository you should clone from at > that time. > > If you are in the middle of a coding project that you don't want to push > immediately send us petsc-maint at mcs.anl.gov and we'll get things organized > so that you can continue with that in the new repository. > > Schedule: > Tuesday -- delete your current petsc-dev repositories and reclone with > hg using the new URL, use this new repository just like the current one > After Tuesday -- read our documentation on using Git (to be sent out > later) and then eventually switch to accessing petsc-dev via git. > Eventually -- the Mecurial (hg) access to petsc-dev will become read > only. > > Reasons for the change: > > 1) We want to provide a more stable version of petsc-dev. To often petsc-dev > won't compile cleanly when pulled. In our new model this will happen much > less often since code will be well tested before being pushed into the stable > version. > > 2) The petsc-dev repository has gotten overly large due to many large binary > files being accidentally added to the repository, thus it is time to get rid > of those files and that requires a reclone. > > 3) We would like to make the change sets and histories in petsc-dev be more > logically related to particular projects and not just a random bunch of > unrelated changes (as Barry has often done). Our new work flow with git will > help with this. > > 4) Though Mecurial is a user friendly system, git appears to have more > community support and thus is likely to have more capabilities and utilities > developed for it in the future. We will strive to make the use of git with > PETSc as simple as possible. > > I have been hesitant to make this change for fear that working with > petsc-dev would become more cumbersome, more annoying, more bookkeeping > involved, more like a job, and hence less fun. And we know people tend to do > something less if it is less fun. Since we don't want people to do things > with petsc-dev less we will be trying hard to make the new model as close to > the old model as possible and not cumbersome or annoying. As always we > appreciate any feedback on what we are doing wrong and how we could improve > it.
Satish, please remove me from petsc-maint. Also, remove me from the developers webpage. I have already purged petsc-dev from my system and won't be pushing anything else from now on.
