[ImageJ-devel] Git vs. Subversion

[Curtis Rueden]

Hi Dscho & everyone,

Thanks, and good point about large commits. For the most part we can adhere
to "commit early, commit often," although certain kinds of changes (mass
source file relocation, for example) look ugly in the history no matter what
you do.

Anyway, as mentioned in another thread, I have migrated the ImageJDev ImageJ
repository over to SVN. I also set up Git on the new dev server, and imglib
is still using git, so keeping our imglib repositories synced will hopefully
continue to be straightforward.

As for syncing ImageJ, I'm sure our SVN will diverge from both ImageJ and
ImageJA—intentionally so as we refactor various things—so for the time being
we would need to backport changes, improvements and bugfixes as they happen.
When we all meet at the October conference, we can discuss the best longterm
strategy to reconcile the various code branches.

Regards,
Curtis

On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 2:21 AM, Johannes Schindelin <
Johannes.Schindelin at gmx.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 1 Sep 2010, Curtis Rueden wrote:
>
> > In conclusion, I am frankly frustrated with Git, and feel SVN would be
> > an easier choice for both our own development team as well as the larger
> > ImageJ community.
>
> If you're frustrated with Git, then it is certainly advisable to switch
> away from it. An SCM should help you develop things, not distract from it.
>
> > However, I welcome discussion, as there are certainly downsides to
> > switching away from Git.
>
> Not so many as you think: inclined developers can always use git-svn.
>
> However, you should make sure to uphold the discipline _not_ to commit
> huge chunks of unreviewably large changes.
>
> This is the curse of Subversion: it is hard to polish patch series until
> they shine. The dear consequence is often that you get a commit history
> that is unreviewable. And what is unreviewable is not reviewed properly.
>
> For example, I would _positively_ hate it if I saw a single monster commit
> adding the abstract plugin infrastructure. Remember: there are patches so
> small and sweet that there are no obvious programming mistakes. And there
> are patches so clunky and heavy and ugly that there are no obvious
> programming mistakes.
>
> Ciao,
> Dscho
>
>
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