Hello All,
As you might know, the mediawiki repository is switching to git. Sumana contacted me to find out whether the pywikipedia community would also be interested in switching.
Possible reasons for switching are mainly related to to developer workflow: it's much easier to make small (local) commits, and we can do things like review-before-merge (even though I don't think this is a large issue). In addition, it's much easier to browse the history, and something like 'svn blame' does not take two decades.
The obvious disadvantage is that people will have to switch: they will have to download new software (git / tortoisegit / whatever), change their repositories, et cetera.
I can remember a discussion about this, but I cannot find it in my mail archives - so I'm guessing this was on IRC.
As far as I am concerned - I'd like to stick with SVN for as long as possible. Even though I *really* like git, we don't gain much by switching. We don't really have the problems with code review mediawiki has, simply because we have much less code committed. However, if wikimedia takes down svn.wikimedia.org at a certain point, we might as well consider switching to a different version control system - essentially the same as what we did when we dropped sf.net for svn.wikimedia.org.
Best, Merlijn
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What is all the hype about git...? SVN has far enough options (may be too much ;) for me...
On 02.02.2012 23:42, Merlijn van Deen wrote:
As far as I am concerned - I'd like to stick with SVN for as long as possible. Even though I *really* like git, we don't gain much by switching. We don't really have the problems with code review mediawiki has, simply because we have much less code committed. However, if wikimedia takes down svn.wikimedia.org http://svn.wikimedia.org at a certain point, we might as well consider switching to a different version control system - essentially the same as what we did when we dropped sf.net http://sf.net for svn.wikimedia.org http://svn.wikimedia.org.
To be honest I am not familiar with git thus I would like to give a vote here:
+ 1 (for: "I'd like to stick with SVN for as long as possible")
Mainly because I think switching would have both; advantages and disadvantages - as usual in life - but I had not time to look at git until know... ;))
Greetings DrTrigon
Well, I asked Sumana if I should begin with git at once, with no answer by this time, and I just installed and began to learn SVN yesterday, spent a lot of time with errors and went to IRC for help, so please give me a bit of time in peace to use it before beginning the whole cycle again. :-)
Dr. Trigon dr.trigon@surfeu.ch wrote:
What is all the hype about git...? SVN has far enough options (may be too much ;) for me...
On 02.02.2012 23:42, Merlijn van Deen wrote:
As far as I am concerned - I'd like to stick with SVN for as long as possible. Even though I *really* like git, we don't gain much by switching. We don't really have the problems with code review mediawiki has, simply because we have much less code committed. However, if wikimedia takes down svn.wikimedia.org http://svn.wikimedia.org at a certain point, we might as well consider switching to a different version control system - essentially the same as what we did when we dropped sf.net http://sf.net for svn.wikimedia.org http://svn.wikimedia.org.
To be honest I am not familiar with git thus I would like to give a vote here:
- 1 (for: "I'd like to stick with SVN for as long as possible")
I like using distributed VCS's (mostly mercurial, recently got interested in fossil, a very nice alternative to git/mercurial/sourceforge) and I would like to use one for pywikipedia, but...
git disadvantages are well-known, one of the #1 reasons is it's user unfriendliness.
git raises a bar too much for casual development. It is difficult to use by just remembering some commands - you need to understand some concepts behind not to make mistakes. Even though I am committer in at least one project using git I still have to learn and re-learn every time I use it (I am not using it daily).
So it depends on the audience - I can see that most of the committers here are quite advanced developers which are probably able to cope with any version control system around. But maybe something simpler than git (like svn) may be better for newcomers.
//Saper
2012/2/2 Merlijn van Deen valhallasw@arctus.nl:
Hello All,
As you might know, the mediawiki repository is switching to git. Sumana contacted me to find out whether the pywikipedia community would also be interested in switching.
Possible reasons for switching are mainly related to to developer workflow: it's much easier to make small (local) commits, and we can do things like review-before-merge (even though I don't think this is a large issue). In addition, it's much easier to browse the history, and something like 'svn blame' does not take two decades.
The obvious disadvantage is that people will have to switch: they will have to download new software (git / tortoisegit / whatever), change their repositories, et cetera.
I can remember a discussion about this, but I cannot find it in my mail archives - so I'm guessing this was on IRC.
The outcome was mostly concerns about history, and a bit about infrastructure, since it would have meant moving to bitbucket/github.
(Merlijn knows my background; and where I come from. For others, full disclosure, I used to contribute to Mercurial) I would recommend switching to Mercurial or Git, especially if the Foundation will need review tools / infrastructure for Mediawiki. Whatever process is used to convert the MW repo can be used to convert the pywikipedia repo.
I'm not concerned / do not care about the higher technical level required to learn how to use a DVCS. As those tools are getting more popular, students actually start to use git/mercurial in school; new developers will soon be more familiar with git than with mercurial.
This being said, I'm not active anymore here, so feel free to ignore the old guy :)
To git or not to git, that is no more the question. The question has been simplified to *when.*
2012/2/16 Sumana Harihareswara sumanah@wikimedia.org on wikitech-l
If you develop MediaWiki core, or work on extensions that the Wikimedia
Foundation deploys, you should prepare for your development workflow to switch on the weekend of March 3rd. Instead of Subversion and the Code Review tool at mediawiki.org, we will be using Git and Gerrit.
Summary:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/15/wikimedia-engineering-moving-from-subv...
Affected projects: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/Conversion#Affected_development_projects
If you work on an extension that the Wikimedia Foundation does not use, or on a non-MediaWiki project hosted at svn.wikimedia.org, you have more time to decide. Talk it over with your community and decide whether you would like to move to Git immediately, move to Git sometime over the next several months, or move to another hosting provider sometime before mid-2013. We would like to gradually migrate all projects currently on Wikimedia's Subversion repository so that we can make all of svn.wikimedia.org read-only by the middle of 2013, and thus only have to support one source control infrastructure.
New workflow instructions, open issues, docs, etc.: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git
Hi all
I have only made good experiences with git and don't see how it is less userfriendly than SVN. On the contrary, I would argue that it allows more non-formal ways of playing with the code, forking and branching to try out new ideas. If one wants to learn the commands as an SVN user, http://git.or.cz/course/svn.html or https://git.wiki.kernel.org/articles/g/i/t/GitSvnCrashCourse_512d.html might be a good start. In the light of Binaris' post that Mediawiki is switching soon and that all projects need to be migrated until 2013 I dont see the point of sticking with the old solution and letting newcomers learn SVN when they will need git in the near future.
Also, using git-svn it is possible to retain the whole history, just for fun and tests I have set up a repo here
https://github.com/hroest/pywikipedia-git
which shows the feasibility of continuing the pywikipedia project with git without losing any history. Of course we will not use github as repo nor do we need to use that particular clone I created to proceed -- indeed it might be smarter to use different git repos for the different folders (pywikipedia, pywikiparser, spelling, threadedhttp) and for the rewrite branch. However, even though git is a distributed system, the import should be done only once and installed at an authorative place (instead of having two systems in parallel). This is mainly because multiple svn-to-git imports will not be merge-able. As I said, this is just for fun and should be done properly later.
Whoever wants to play around with it can do a git clone https://github.com/hroest/pywikipedia-git and then look at the result. Also, install gitk it is a very powerful and just run gitk inside the git folder and it will display the complete history. It should be around 22 MB.
Greetings
Hannes
PS: if someone wants to try the import him/herself try out the following cmd
git svn clone http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/pywikipedia/ -T trunk -b branches
On 16 February 2012 09:54, Bináris wikiposta@gmail.com wrote:
To git or not to git, that is no more the question. The question has been simplified to when.
2012/2/16 Sumana Harihareswara sumanah@wikimedia.org on wikitech-l
If you develop MediaWiki core, or work on extensions that the Wikimedia Foundation deploys, you should prepare for your development workflow to switch on the weekend of March 3rd. Instead of Subversion and the Code Review tool at mediawiki.org, we will be using Git and Gerrit.
Summary:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/15/wikimedia-engineering-moving-from-subv...
Affected projects:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/Conversion#Affected_development_projects
If you work on an extension that the Wikimedia Foundation does not use, or on a non-MediaWiki project hosted at svn.wikimedia.org, you have more time to decide. Talk it over with your community and decide whether you would like to move to Git immediately, move to Git sometime over the next several months, or move to another hosting provider sometime before mid-2013. We would like to gradually migrate all projects currently on Wikimedia's Subversion repository so that we can make all of svn.wikimedia.org read-only by the middle of 2013, and thus only have to support one source control infrastructure.
New workflow instructions, open issues, docs, etc.: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git
-- Bináris
Pywikipedia-l mailing list Pywikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/pywikipedia-l