[Kde-scm-interest] [Proposal] Package splitting with thin meta-repos

[Pau Garcia i Quiles]

2010/1/29 ComputerDruid <computerdruid at gmail.com>:
> On Friday 29 January 2010 02:59:04 Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:28:24PM -0500, ComputerDruid wrote:
>> > Please respond with comments here, I want to know what the
>> > shortcomings of this kind of system would be.
>>
>> great - you replaced git's suboptimal builtin submodule handling with a
>> home-grown scripted solution which fails for *everything* but checking
>> out (and possibly updatating). what a progress ...
>
> Correct. I fail to perceive how this would be a bad thing. Since you know, do
> enlighten me.
>
> The entire point is to get the git repos in the hands of the users in a bulk
> fashion. The only other all-at-once operation that might be needed is the
> "update everything" action.
>
> This doesn't force a user to check out the submodules if they don't want to.
> They could still clone out the meta-repo, clone the subrepos, then remove one
> they didn't want, or clone only the subrepos they wanted and only make use of
> the update scripts or the cmake files in the meta-repo. This is the most
> flexible solution I can think of, since it doesn't force anyone to clone
> anything more than they want to, yet still makes it easy to get everything.
>
> My only REAL worry about this kind of system would be that the scripts would
> get too complicated and be very difficult to maintain and debug. But I'm fairly
> certain that it could be accomplished with very little code, and I would
> expect it to be the policy of KDE too keep it that way.
>
> So basically I'm missing what action you need to do across the whole of KDE
> that isn't a "get everything" or "update everything".

You need no new code. There's 'repo' for that case. But I'm not sure
we want to go that path. I certainly dislike it.

As I said before, IMHO the need for something like 'svn externals'
should be fulfilled in git (i. e. adding a new subcommand to the git
suite, not creating our own command). I already pointed to a thread
where this was being discussed. Submodules only work for a very
specific case.

Oh, and regarding 'git clone --recursive', well, '--recursive' should
be the default, not the option. IMHO it should be exactly the
opposite: 'git clone --no-recursive' should be the option.

-- 
Pau Garcia i Quiles
http://www.elpauer.org
(Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)