[Zope-dev] Supporting interworking with repository branches on github

[Laurence Rowe]

On 23 November 2011 06:58, Wolfgang Schnerring <ws at gocept.com> wrote:
> * Tres Seaver <tseaver at palladion.com> [2011-11-22 22:46]:
>> On 11/22/2011 12:13 PM, Laurence Rowe wrote:
>>> While the Zope Foundation deliberates on version control, I think
>>> it's likely that development will continue using Git and Github.
>>
>> Please don't try to jump the gun on the process here [...]
>> It is not appropriate for a small subset of the community to preempt
>> this kind of choid: "ask forgiveness rather than permission" is *not*
>> going to fly here, and trying to push harder only irritates folks you
>> might otherwise persuade.
>
> When reading the emails on this list about this topic, I get a strong
> feeling of "us vs. them". Is that really necessary?
>
> In that light, and trying to make visible the (positive!) aspects of the
> different opinions, allow me to ask:
>
> Tres, while I realize that you also rightly raise the formal issue that
> a vocal minority shouldn't surge ahead and create facts, do I understand
> you correctly that the main inherent[1] issue is a legal one, concerning
> proper handling of copyright etc.? Could someone explain what's at stake
> here, since at least I only have a vague feeling of "if something in
> that area goes wrong, it could be really bad"?
>
> Laurence, do I understand you correctly that your main concern is ease
> of use for development and that decentralized version control would be
> preferable to a centralized one? Do you feel unduly blocked by the need
> to resolve these (rather tricky) legal issues? Might a technical
> solution be of use until this is resolved (git can read/write svn, can't
> it)?

Yes, we want to benefit from the ease of merging afforded by git and
be able to use the excellent facilities that github provides.
Unfortunately git-svn is really only a tool for an individual
developer (collaboration still takes place in svn) and does not bring
the benefits that a real git repository does - the ability to
collaborate on github and use the tools provided there. The current
scratch repository is a conversion using svn2git, as that has proper
support for tags.

It's not clear to me what the blocking issues are from the ZF
perspective, whether legal or just that most ZF members don't want to
use git.

Laurence