Re: Collaboration (was Re: [webkit-dev] Pulling together on WebKit Mobile)

[Mark Rowe]

On 12/01/2008, at 18:13, Mike Emmel wrote:

Webkit is a fairly sophisticated piece of code using git for daily
development is

capable of learning git.

Something as simple as this is sufficient.

http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2007/09/git-cheat-sheet.html

Or maybe even this ?

http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/wiki/UsingGitWithWebKit

trivial. I'd expect any developer who was collaborating on webkit would also be

I've worked with a number of people that have been interested in experimenting with Git for use with WebKit. The feedback I have received from the majority of them is that git is much less friendly to use than Subversion, and that the documentation is hard to follow for new users. It does have its benefits once you understand how to use it, but it has a hell of a learning curve before you get to that point.

I've got other small projects I'd like to share with others before
they are ready to submit to the mainline.

are working on without having to discover
git repos scattered randomly about the internet.

And more important if others are interested I'd like to see what they

A minimal-effort solution could be to use <http://repo.or.cz/> ,and

other developers are using.  A quick glance shows that Holger has a
repository on repo.or.cz, and there appears to be a GNUstep port
hosted there too.  As best I can tell, this light-weight approach
would fulfil your immediate need.

create a wiki page to catalogue the locations of git repositories that

I take it you did not look at that repository that carefully.

http://repo.or.cz/w/webbrowser.git

I tried this over a year ago and found that your incorrect in your
assumptions about the suitability.

If you're going to write off all possible solutions except the one you have set your mind on then I feel this discussion is not going to get very far.

Why wait your now officially supporting git via svn tracking.
A clone server that allows developer to create common working areas
is a small step. I'd say you have already done most of the work.
I'd suspect that members of the open source community would be willing

open source projects most if not all of opendesktop.org is under git.

server and that large open source projects are successfully using git
I think the
argument your making is weak at best.

to help with git issues if they arise. Also the tool is used for a lot of large And I'd say that X11 development alone is at least as complex as webkit not to mention linux kernel development. Given that you already support a git

We clearly have different definitions of "support". git.webkit.org provides a git-svn mirror. However, working with that mirror is left up to the end user. We provide no documentation for it or expectations that all our tools will function correctly. You also appear to be under the impression that because a given tool is used by another project it must be suitable for adoption by WebKit. The projects you mention have different development models, processes and supported platforms that may make the tool more suitable for them.

Another immediate need is if you did this I'd like to ask Pleyo to
move there development over
to this new open git server. Pleyo has done some fairly innovative
work but they have diverged
from the main tree and it would take time and effort to take some of
there ideas and adopt them
to the mainline code base. I'm not speaking for Pleyo but its a shame
that their work has no easy
way to make it back into the mainline development tree.

As far as I am aware they have made little effort to contribute changes back. Pleyo has been more than willing to merge changes from trunk WebKit, or even unfinished patches in Bugzilla, so claiming they need git to make submitting changes possible feels very much like blaming the tools for a social problem.

Your webkit ports list has none of this work listed.

http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/wiki

It's a wiki.  I would encourage you to add info about these projects.

Your QT port does not have the git working repository linked in a
obvious manner if at all.

http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/wiki/QtWebKit

Sure it does: click "Information for Contributors".

I see no reason to have this stuff scattered across the internet.  Why
can't webkit.org offer
to host these ports ?

Simply dismissing the issues that I raised does nothing to address them.

- Mark

I have already outlined the reasons why *I* feel it is premature for the WebKit project to do this at this time. If you feel strongly about this, I would suggest you trade talk for action and improve the git compatibility of our tools, document processes for working with git against WebKit, and investigate precisely how your ideal result would work (what infrastructure would be needed, what workflow should be used, what changes to tools this would require).

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