[ruby-core:25353] Re: [Feature #2033] Move Core Development to Git

Federico Builes wrote:
> Hello Urabe,
> 
> On Sep 3, 2009, at 6:44 PM, Urabe Shyouhei wrote:
> 
>> Ruby is a basic infrastructure that needs to be stable.  If it goes as
>> agile as
>> Rails, there should be problems.  A problem may be the hardness for
>> Rails to
>> catch-up with Ruby, when both of them are equally as agile.
> 
> Is this issue really related to the SCM that the project uses?
> 
> Many projects have had an increase in their number of collaborators when
> they moved to Git, but that doesn't mean that no one will be in charge
> and that it will be moving so fast that projects like Rails won't be
> able to keep up with it (I'm not entirely sure that I got your point
> there).

Yes, it may not be directly a SCM issue.  The history of ruby has been a
history of unmaintained codes.  Even today without the chaos of distributed
development, there are many lines of codes in its repo which are not baby-sat.
When you want to increase number of contributions yet decrease number of
unmaintained codes, there should be some mechanism to enforce that. Ruby lacks
that now.

>> So sorry but I don't like the idea for Ruby to move into a fully
>> decentralized
>> development.  There should be at least one single center of Ruby as we
>> have
>> today.  And as a centralized development tool, Subversion is the best
>> thing we
>> have.
> 
> Excuse my lack of knowledge in this matter, but what prevents ruby-core
> from maintaining a canonical Ruby Git repository hosted in the same
> servers that SVN resides in right now (or in Github if you don't want to
> go through the admin. hassle)?
> You can still give commit access only to your list of trusted members
> and this "central" repository will be the one that everyone pulls off
> when they want to get the official version.
> What does SVN gives you that Git misses in this case?

You're saying "there's no reason not to move to git"; but I'm saying "there's
no reason to move to git".  Why you hate svn so much?  It's perfect for us.

>> I think a centralized SVN repo + official git-svn mirror is the best
>> way for
>> ruby because that should suit for its characteristics and development
>> style.
> 
> I would really appreciate it if you could be more specific in the
> "characteristics and development style" that SVN fits so well and that
> Git doesn't.

I was pointing to the fact that ruby development is centralized.  Centralized
to matz.  Have you ever seen a single line email from matz that just says
"commit that please"?  Why ruby development do not scale is clear; matz is the
bottleneck.  Decentralized development insist him (and us) to grately delegate
what he's doing now to our community.  Perhaps that should make YOU happy, but
also make matz unhappy.  If you want to hijack his / other committers' power
and authority, you should watch your step not to offend them.  To protect their
sanctuary yet to make your path for contribution, a SVN repo + git-svn mirror
is the best way I believe.