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SVN for src, status?

Joseph S. Myers joseph@codesourcery.com
Tue May 12 22:39:00 GMT 2009 
On Tue, 12 May 2009, Segher Boessenkool wrote:

> harder though.  So my vote is to move to either SVN or git ASAP;
> I don't care which one.

My vote is to do nothing ASAP, but for the advocates of different schemes 
to work out detailed designs for the various options for single repository 
and full checkouts (changes to how you configure to build only a subset of 
components) / single repository and partial checkouts (possible with SVN, 
not with git) / multiple repositories and automatic merging of shared 
files between them and once there are detailed designs produce trial 
conversions (likely several trial conversions over the course of a few 
months) of the repository and all associated scripts run on commit etc. 
for people to play with.  Trial conversions might just be for a single 
option, or for more than one option depending on feelings about the 
different options.  If Red Hat people can obtain the release of the 
pre-sourceware history, then I'm sure Ian can help with including it in 
the trial conversions.

Anything requiring special scripts for checkout / commit / push needs to 
include those scripts in the trial conversions (and the scripts need to 
cover both read-only and write-access checkouts, and switching between the 
two).

I will observe we have great difficulty keeping files in sync between GCC 
and src with just two repositories and shared files often spend months out 
of sync after a change is applied in one place only, and suggest that any 
multiple-repository scheme needs fully automatic merging of changes to 
shared files so that it is made impossible (by hooks preventing commits / 
pushes to the wrong place, for example) for someone accidentally to get 
the master versions of the shared files out of sync.  (Of course changes 
to the files on branches should be allowed without requiring them to be in 
sync with some other repository, just not on the mainline of development.)

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com
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