[ruby-core:25357] Re: [Feature #2033] Move Core Development to Git

On Fri, 4 Sep 2009 07:26:01 +0900
Urabe Shyouhei <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Jon wrote:
> >> Some commiter of Ruby live on Windows.
> >> And windows port of git, msysgit, is still preview (cygwin port is not acceptable).
> >> So we can't move to git.
> > 
> > As a user of msysgit on Win2K, WinXP, and Vista machines I've found the current msysgit preview to be very usable.  While I personally prefer Mercurial, I'm quickly becoming a big fan of Git and Github.
> 
> That's not the point.  The problem on msysGit is that it IS a preview.  It's
> not a matter of stability.  We cannot believe a preview product especially when
> that preview software is a fundamental tool to us, such as git.

I strongly agree with your point that a fundamental development tool must be stable for the core committers and their workflows.  Quite frankly, anything else is waste of their precious and limited time.

Having trade in your SVN SuperHero utility belt for Git Grasshopper training wheels in the short term really is a developer tax that no one is really eager to pay.

That said, I felt strongly enough that the "preview" label to the current msysgit was incorrect that I came out of "lurk mode" to share my successful experience with msysgit on Windows, and hopefully encourage others to give it a try and decide for themselves.  I also have no affiliation with the msysgit project other than a happy user.

One thing that may help minimize the developer tax of learning Git and evaluating whether msysgit in particular will meet the needs of the core developers using Windows, is to add a Committers Workflow Recipes page to your http://wiki.github.com/shyouhei/ruby

Similiar to your http://wiki.github.com/shyouhei/ruby/committerhowto the page would primarily focus on providing Ruby-specific Git workflows that help SVN-based committers quickly get productive with Git.  For example, it could be used as a "whiteboard" of sorts in which a committer my post their favorite SVN time-saving trick "How do I do ... in Git?" and others with more Git expertise could answer.

Sure, one can use Google and find a bunch of useful Git tidbits, but having ruby-core Git usage specifics in one place is a value add.

The Committers Workflow Recipes wiki page does not address the perception of msysgit instability, but I think it could dramatically help lower the developer tax of switching to Git for ruby-core specifics.  And it should help anyone evaluating msysgit's stability be able to quickly focus on whether msysgit is stable for their particular workflows.

Jon