On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 8:41 AM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
So yeah, its not as easy as it sounds on the tin, so I don't want to hand this out en masse. In an ideal world, I want us to have a special page where people can request repos and we can automate the icky backend stuff.
If it isn't easy, let's make it easy. I'm a new developer and not having a repository to develop in has been absolutely paralyzing. (I requested one on May 23, for what it's worth).
Gerrit is not just an SCM: there is a rapidly growing ecosystem of services that integrate with it -- and if your code isn't there, you're persona non grata. I've whipped up two iterations of a data collection backend for my team and got it set up on a labs instance, but that was a week ago, and since then things are at a standstill. It's been hard to get anyone to look at it, because everyone's workflow and attentional habits are interwoven with Gerrit now.
This particular side-project is a useful illustration of another important point: Git's usefulness isn't limited to managing mature projects like Mediawiki -- it has a crucial role to play in the earliest stages of development, too. I have no idea if what I wrote is usable and scalable, and it would've been good to get some feedback early. In the past, I have found it useful and productive to whip up quick prototypes and put them up on GitHub for feedback, instead of trading in inchoate ideas, or sitting on them until the ideas feel mature (which *never* happens for me until I sit down and start writing code). The ideas that stick get developed into full-fledged products. Using Git in this way has been such a tremendous boon for me as a developer, and not having that has been really frustrating.
I don't think expanding git-creation rights to a few more individuals goes far enough, because the point at which you need a repository is antecedent to the point in time at which you feel comfortable describing your work to someone. For cool projects to happen, people need to feel empowered to start repos for projects that seem speculative and maybe even a little silly, and that won't happen when you make it necessary to ask for permission.
At this point I expect someone to come along and point out that you don't need Gerrit to start a Git repository -- "git init" will suffice. And that's true, as long as you don't need to collaborate with anyone, or develop on more than one machine (say rsync & I'll bop you on the head!), or have stable urls to share with people.