[ensembl-dev] Git

[W. Augustine Dunn III]

YES TO THIS.
On Sep 10, 2012 9:24 AM, "Youens-Clark, Ken" <kclark at cshl.edu> wrote:

> While meeting on campus, I brought up the multiple advantages to an
> outside developer such as myself to having the Ensembl code repository move
> to Git.  I'll list a few points to start the discussion:
>
> - When I find bugs, I can only submit a diff to this mailing list and hope
> that someone chooses to manually apply and commit it.  If I were able to
> clone your code, I could have all the power of a proper code management
> system with local atomic commits, etc., by making my own branch and pushing
> that branch back to you when I was done.  Then you could easily merge my
> changes as you saw fit.
>
> - According to the Wiki page (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_Versions_System),
> CVS was started in 1986.  The index page on what appears to be a somewhat
> official information page at "http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/" was last
> updated in 2006.  The last message in the archive of the "cvs-announce"
> list telling of the release of version 1.11.23 is from 2008, and the GNU
> FTP site at "http://ftp.gnu.org/non-gnu/cvs/source/stable/" shows this is
> the last release.  Basically, CVS development appears to have been
> abandoned about 4 years ago.
>
> - By contrast, Git was developed by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux,
> for the management of the Linux kernel code.  It is enormously powerful
> (and, yes, more complex than CVS, but not necessarily in the main) and is
> actively developed by a vibrant community of dedicated hackers.  There are
> many sources of help (books, mailing lists, IRC, YouTube videos,
> http://git-scm.com/community, etc.).
>
> - All the points at "
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrent_Versions_System#Criticism" still
> hold true.  No point in repeating them here.  Git's basic ideas are
> described here:  "http://git-scm.com/about".
>
> - Git's social ideas of coding are worth exploring and adopting.  The ease
> with which a developer can branch is a benefit to large organizations like
> Ensembl so that people are not committing to HEAD.  Moving to Git could
> spur an improvement in other Ensembl coding practices.  It has in Gramene.
>  Just sayin'.
>
> Code is not like wine;  it does not generally improve with age.  CVS is
> basically dead and is holding back the collaborative potential of the
> project(s).  There are tools to help you move (
> http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/cvs2git.html) and loads of documentation from
> others who have done it (
> http://www.oak.homeunix.org/~marcel/blog/2009/06/03/tracking-cvs-with-git-using-cvs2git).
>  I really think it's time to consider a change.
>
> Just my 2 cents (which, according to the exchange rate, is worth very
> little).
>
> --
> Ken Youens-Clark
> Ware Lab/CSHL/USDA-ARS
> kclark at cshl.edu
>
>
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