[KPhotoAlbum] OT: KDE svn worries (was: Patch for Viewer Settings)

[Andreas Neustifter]

Hi!

On 20.02.2010, at 16:15, jedd wrote:

> On Friday 19 February 2010 16:23:54 Andreas Neustifter wrote:
>> On 02/18/2010 10:39 PM, jedd wrote:
>>>  I can't but help think that git would not only solve these
>>>  kinds of small problems, but also probably speed up the
>>>  rate of advance of the whole of KDE4 (two years and it's
>>>  still buggy as all get out!).  Oh well.  Smarter people than
>>>  me still haven't worked out how to migrate to it.
>>
>> How do you think that git could be a solution for that? I don't think
>> switching the version control leads to a thriving developer community
>> per se.
>
> The twee answer is 'show me the svnhub site' - but it actually has
> some substance to it.  For whatever reason, git seems to have
> generated a fair bit of passion around it.  Either the publicity
> before & around its arrival, the fame of the first author - who
> knows.  The popularity of github has been a curious thing, and
> the obvious question there is how much is down to the nature
> of the tech itself.

The git tech is really amazing, don't get me wrong. But I know enough  
projects that are still on svn and thats no hindrance for them to  
become great projects with a big community. I love git and use it  
whereever I can (sometimes on top of SVN, sometimes standalone) but I  
did'nt use github until recently (and thats only for hosting the KPA  
git mirror and not for other community features. So yes, github+git is  
an amazing combination but this alone is not enough...

> If you go and watch the talk Linus gave to the Googlers some years
> ago (it's easy to find on youtube - about an hour long) you get some
> good insights into .. well, quite a few things I think.

I watched that as soon as I found out about git, some 2(?) years ago,  
its a great talk...

> There was
> a Big Thread or two, on various lists, involving Linus and some
> of the wearers of Big Pants in the KDE world around the same time,
> so obviously *some* people thought there would be *some* value
> in shifting away from svn and to, if not git, then at least a properly
> distributed VCS.  It's possible, but unlikely, that the things that
> made the prospect interesting a few years ago don't apply any
> longer - but I suspect that they actually apply even more.

Of course there would be value! But when I wrote a patch for GIMP it  
was still on SVN and it didn't occur to me that this was a problem.  
One always ends up sending patches back and fourth, no matter what VCS.

> From a technical POV it's hard to argue that branching and merging
> aren't significantly more pleasant activities in git than they are in
> svn.

To quarrels about that either :-)

> You're absolutely right, though - it's not something you'd swing the
> whole project (KDE) across to in one mega-repo, and I don't think
> anyone has ever considered that as a realistic option.

I was just thinking out loud, I didn't really consider this to be an  
option...

> FWIW I grab CodeIgniter updates - which they release via svn on
> their site - via the mirror someone maintains at github - it just
> feels more comfortable. :)

But you would still pull them from SVN if there was no git. And it  
would be not as nice, but it would work and your not interested in an  
project because of git or SVN but because of its contents.

All I'm say is that its not the VCS system but the content and the  
community that make up a great project.

(As a precursor to this paragraph: I'm a Gnome guy and I do not like   
KDE, so the next paragraphs are mere speculation :-)

I guess KDE has made the same leap for 3 to 4 as e.g. Mac OS has made  
from 9 to X. Its a big jump rebuilding the whole thing and the first  
few releases of Mac OS (so I hear, haven't used them myself) were  
barely usable. But they got around and 10.4 (Tiger) which was my first  
experience was really great. And it took them 4 years to get there.  
And from what I hear KDE is getting usable again and is quite okay  
now, so maybe it just needs a year or two to fully mature.

I know two year in Open Source is like a decade, but I guess KDE will  
get around. If maybe just because of all the KDE guys that hate Gnome  
so much they will use an ugly and buggy  desktop als long as its not  
Gnome :-)

Andi