2012/12/26 Merlijn van Deen valhallasw@arctus.nl:
Hello all,
As you might know, the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has moved most Mediawiki (MW)-related repositories from svn version control to git + gerrit. As a consequence, the WMF also wants to stop running their svn server - which is the server we are using.
Now the question is: where do we want to move to, and what version control system (vcs) do we want to use? Do we find that the WMF gerrit-based system is user-friendly and easy enough? Do we care about having svn-based access?
I think there are a few options we can consider:
- go with the gerrit flow: convert the repository to git and host the
repositories with the WMF. This has the advantage of having the repository in a practical place (with all the other MW related repositories).
- move to github: convert to git, and host the repository at github.
This has the advantage of the user-friendlyness of github, but also gives us SVN access. We can always easily move to WMF-based hosting once we feel it is user-friendly enough: the github repository will then just mirror the WM=F-hosted repository.
- move to another SVN host. This is easier (we don't need to convert
any repository), but it also means that it will be hard to move to WMF-based hosting when we want. In addition, we don't get the nice things git gives us: easy branching and easy patch submission ('pull requests').
Personally, I am in favor of option (2): gerrit is clearly useful for managing a project of the size of MW, but I think it is probably overkill for something the size of pywikipedia. Github has an (imo) much clearer interface than gerrit, and has tons of information for new git users. Last, but not least, github has svn support, which makes it even easier to switch, for both contributors and users.
I welcome your opinions!
Hi,
As a user who sometimes wants to submit patches, I also prefer option (2). The pull requests and branching in github are a breeze compared to both the current system and gerrit. Plus, with just a little bit of effort from the maintainers, each of us could get proper attribution in ohloh - you can set the author as a different person from the commiter. :)
Regards, Strainu