Changes to our Git infrastructure

[Ian Wadham]

On 05/01/2015, at 10:45 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> On Sunday 04 January 2015 13:38:09 Jeff Mitchell wrote:
>> I do agree that we want the barrier to entry to be as low as possible.
>> As is often the case, I think that may conflict somewhat with what some
>> of the more/very experienced developers might find to be most useful to
>> them personally. Finding the best balance is a difficult task.
> 
> That's true, and that's exactly the reason why we should consciously decide 
> what our target is. It might be perfectly valid to focus on current 
> contributors and go with something like a gerrit-based solution, but if we 
> want to focus on new people there might be better solutions.

And what about *current* developers who are NOT "more or very experienced"?
What is the cost to them (and the KDE Community) of having to learn new tools,
not to mention new libraries and porting to new libraries?

Speaking for myself, I find this a huge turnoff in the KDE world and am now
planning to retire from KDE as soon as I can.  But then I am 76 and git is my
10th source-code control system since 1965-66, so I have little interest in
mastering it.

I have also found ReviewBoard utterly counter-productive this year, either
because one writes an entry and nobody reviews it, or nobody understands
it, or because one gets nitpicked about syntax and white space when one is
really looking for helpful advice about how better to solve the problem at hand.
I think I must have lost a month or two on ReviewBoard during the year, with
very little helpful advice gained.

So how will a new tool change that?  As we used to say when I was working,
"New technology is the answer, but what is the question?"  Are the reviewers
going to change their style?  Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see Jeff and
Ben conducting what looks like a proper requirements analysis.  Good on you!

I wonder also how many people have just tiptoed quietly away from the KDE
Community rather than speak out about frustrations they may have been
feeling.  Where *did* all those people go in the last few years?  And why?

All the best, Ian W.