[TYPO3-commerce] Reminder - poll about SVN vs Git

[Karsten Dambekalns]

Hi Jigal.

By now I think you simply personally don't like git (which is ok, I
don't svn) :).

Anyway, I'll try to respond to some of the things I think are not "true".

On 15.06.11 10:33, Jigal van Hemert wrote:
> - yet another place for discussion (besides bugtracker and
> newsgroup/mailinglist)

No, Gerrit replaces the mailing list when it comes to RFC, no thing
additional here.

> - new patches, new versions of patches and reviews/comments are not
> pushed to the newsgroup but you have to actively look them up in gerrit

I also have to actively fetch news. And *gasp* read them. If you want
mails, set up a watched project and enable mail notification in Gerrit.

> - gerrit lacks options to categorize / tag changes

Well, topics come to mind here. What else do you need? Maybe a feature
request to Gerrit can help. Also I usually star changes I keep an eye
on, depending on the situation (sometimes it means "cherry-picked
already", sometimes "get back to this", as needed).

> - all reviews/comments are grouped by version of patch ("change set"),
> it lacks a way to respond to a particular review

Nothing beats answers to inline comments in diff view, when it comes to
that IMHO.

> - a new version of a patch (even if only the commit message changed)
> results in loss of votes

Which is good, because it forces you to actually check what was changed.
If the change was trivial, just mention you kept earlier votes in mind
and give +2/+2 to submit.

> - if patch cannot be applied automatically (at first gerrit could not
> apply a patch to a file if that was modified by another patch (fixed in
> configuration), now there are problems when a submodule is introduced
> somewhere else in the source tree) the patch has to be fixed, pushed
> again and review/submitted again (instead of just fixing it before
> committing to svn)

Ever tried to change svn:externals? No? Yes? Not less trouble. As to
"just fixing before commit", see above on loss of votes.

> - if you support multiple versions a separate patch for each version
> (branch) has to be pushed and reviewed. With svn it is often enough to
> have a single patch for several versions. This also means that if you
> have to make modifications to a patch you have to push new patches for
> each branch.

Yes, but it could well be there are subtle differences between branches
that make a review really worth it. And it's a question of workflow, I
would push a change to one branch for review and only if that is
accepted, adapt it to the other branches. Keeping two or three updated
at the same time is cumbersome, indeed.

> - with git you can work on different things more easily because you can
> create (local) branches for each task. If you are not comfortable using
> git (i.e. you're not a git expert who can easily fix problematic
> situations) this is quite scary. You have to trust git to store your
> work correctly.

I also had to trust svn, and that was harder. svn broke for me multiple
times in the past (the scary way of breaking, where you had to mess with
stuff inside .svn/soemthingbinary). With git I had no such problem so far.

> With svn you create patches to store work and revert the changes. You
> could easily delete the working directory and checkout the repository
> again and still have the patches.

What keeps you from doing this with git? On the contrary, with git you
can even keep commit messages, authors and committers in a patch.

> - although there are GUI tools for git, there is virtually no support
> for them from the git experts in the community. Especially for Windows
> GUI tools you are on your own (I'm sorry to say, but a couple of them
> have explicitly refused to take a look at them). Make sure you're a
> command line fan and like things such as bash, vi, etc.; then you may
> like git too.

Wrong. The problem is twofold. First, most GUIs simply replicate CLI git
via buttons, no gain as such you still need to understand git. The only
exception so far is the new "Github for Mac" client release some days ago.

Second, sorry, taking this slightly personal, when it comes to refusing
support for Windows users from my side: I have no Windows, I have no
clue about Windows. SmartGit is available for Windows, Linux and Mac and
is the same thing all across. Surely someone uses it and could help you.

Plus: *noone* helped me to get into git. If that makes me an expert that
has to help everyone else, I better stop learning new things.

Regards,
Karsten