Mozilla 2 mercurial repository naming
Johnny Stenback
We're almost ready to finalize the new mercurial repository for the
future Mozilla 2 work, the repository is up and running with automated
merges from the CVS trunk. The one remaining question is what the main
Mozilla 2 branch should be named. "trunk" would be the obvious name as
that's what we've been using for the CVS HEAD branch since forever, but
that potentially causes confusion between the two. The alternative that
was picked was "mozilla2-trunk" to disambiguate from the CVS naming, but
that locks the name of the repository to Mozilla 2, and hopefully there
will be life after Mozilla 2 as well and then that name doesn't
necessarily make sense. Renaming a mercurial repository is trivial, but
why even go there if we can find a name up front that will outlive any
one version.
This all came out of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377434
where I disagreed with the mozilla2-trunk naming, if others have
thoughts on this please see the bug for more discussion and comment in
the bug please.
--
jst
Jonas Sicking
Will this trunk always stay in sync with the cvs trunk? At least until
we EOL the cvs repository. If so, calling them the same doesn't seem
like a problem to me.
An alternative name would be 'hgtrunk', but that too seems like a bad
idea if it's going to get out of sync with the cvs trunk.
/ Jonas
Jonathan Watt
> Hello all,
>
> We're almost ready to finalize the new mercurial repository for the
> future Mozilla 2 work, the repository is up and running with automated
> merges from the CVS trunk. The one remaining question is what the main
> Mozilla 2 branch should be named. "trunk" would be the obvious name as
> that's what we've been using for the CVS HEAD branch since forever, but
> that potentially causes confusion between the two. The alternative that
> was picked was "mozilla2-trunk" to disambiguate from the CVS naming, but
> that locks the name of the repository to Mozilla 2, and hopefully there
> will be life after Mozilla 2 as well and then that name doesn't
> necessarily make sense. Renaming a mercurial repository is trivial, but
> why even go there if we can find a name up front that will outlive any
> one version.
My preference would be "trunk". Where necessary I'd hope people can use "hg
trunk"/"mozilla2 trunk" or "cvs trunk" to disambiguate.
-Jonathan
John S. Thomsen
front?
Neil
> We're almost ready to finalize the new mercurial repository for the
> future Mozilla 2 work, the repository is up and running with automated
> merges from the CVS trunk. The one remaining question is what the main
> Mozilla 2 branch should be named. "trunk" would be the obvious name as
> that's what we've been using for the CVS HEAD branch since forever,
> but that potentially causes confusion between the two. The alternative
> that was picked was "mozilla2-trunk" to disambiguate from the CVS
> naming, but that locks the name of the repository to Mozilla 2, and
> hopefully there will be life after Mozilla 2 as well and then that
> name doesn't necessarily make sense. Renaming a mercurial repository
> is trivial, but why even go there if we can find a name up front that
> will outlive any one version.
"xulrunner" (and a separate "browser" repo, obviously).
--
Warning: May contain traces of nuts.
Johnny Stenback
discussions on IRC etc. Robert Sayre suggested the name
"mozilla-central" in the bug, and while I'm not completely in love with
that name, it would work fine with me. It avoids the whole "trunk" name,
doesn't repeat "hg", etc etc.
Other thoughts?
--
jst
Justin Dolske
> Other thoughts?
At risk of painting the bike shed...
The words "nexus" or "crux" came to mind. And they both have an 'x',
which makes them quite alluring. :)
[EG, "mozilla-nexus", "moz-crux", etc.]
And Google defines "crux" as:
1. The basic, central, or critical point or feature: the crux of
the matter; the crux of an argument.
2. A puzzling or apparently insoluble problem.
Judge for yourself which definition fits Mozilla better!
Justin
Dão
--Dao
Gervase Markham
> The words "nexus" or "crux" came to mind. And they both have an 'x',
> which makes them quite alluring. :)
But both imply a point rather than a continuation, as "trunk" does.
Can't we just use "trunk", and disambiguate in conversation as
necessary? It's standard source-control terminology. And people will
talk about "the Mozilla 2 trunk" whether you call the module that or not.
If not, then how about using a different natural metaphor which has
branches (after a fashion), and picking "river", "stream", or "mainstream"?
Gerv
Benjamin Smedberg
> Justin Dolske wrote:
>> The words "nexus" or "crux" came to mind. And they both have an 'x',
>> which makes them quite alluring. :)
>
> But both imply a point rather than a continuation, as "trunk" does.
>
> Can't we just use "trunk", and disambiguate in conversation as
> necessary? It's standard source-control terminology. And people will
> talk about "the Mozilla 2 trunk" whether you call the module that or not.
As I noted in the bug, the confusion of having two "main things" without a
version number is going to be hard to document and keep from becoming confusing.
Johnny argues that locking the name to "Mozilla 2" is a bad thing, because
it limits our options after Mozilla 2. I believe that versioned naming is a
good thing, and does not limit our options at all:
1) In the distributed VCS world, there doesn't need to be a single "trunk"
from which all things branch. The mozilla2-trunk name indicates clearly what
the goal of this tree is.
2) If/when we get to "Mozilla 3", we can and probably should clone the
existing tree with a new name for major development, just as we have for
mozilla 2. Therefore ongoing development would happen on "mozilla3-trunk".
The mozilla3-trunk can merge/track the mozilla2-trunk for as long as
necessary, just like any feature branch would.
3) trees are easy to rename or clone to a new location
--BDS
Colin Barrett
> 1) In the distributed VCS world, there doesn't need to be a single "trunk"
> from which all things branch. The mozilla2-trunk name indicates clearly what
> the goal of this tree is.
I definitely agree. The concept of "one branch that continues on,
forever and ever, amen" is alien to most DCVSes. We should embrace the
new DVCS model wholly, being wishy-washy about it will only lead to pain
later.
-Colin
Axel Hecht
I'm not sure that changing the "this is what you want"-repository every
now and then is a good idea. And however alien that concept might be to
DVCSes, I don't see a way around answering that question.
Nor do I think we should add new funky terms like crux or nexus. They're
neither obvious nor really known across languages and cultures.
Axel
Gijs Kruitbosch
Nor is 'trunk'. When I was new to the project, I treated it much more as
a concept 'an sich' than as a metaphor. It was only later that I
realized there was actually a point behind the name. So to be honest, I
don't think the i18n aspect of this is particularly pressing unless
whatever the new proposed name will be is exceptionally vulgar or
affronting in some language we care about :-)
~ Gijs
bre...@mozilla.org
> After this all started there's been some comments in the bug and some
> discussions on IRC etc. Robert Sayre suggested the name
> "mozilla-central" in the bug, and while I'm not completely in love with
> that name, it would work fine with me. It avoids the whole "trunk" name,
> doesn't repeat "hg", etc etc.
I'm ok with mozilla2-trunk or mozilla-central. Sounds like no one
needs hg, not everyone wants 2 in the name (even though Benjamin and
Colin are spot on about DVCS development), and trunk may be less
helpful to non-English-as-first-language speakers.
Really, we just need to pick one and go. Anyone mind if I do that? I'm
favoring mozilla-central.
/be
Colin Barrett
mozilla2-central is the better of the two IMO, since it doesn't shadow
the existing term "trunk."
Remember, we can clone or move the name of this repo at pretty much any
time, I don't think this is that big of a deal, compared to the other
issues facing our Hg setup right now.
-Colin
Michael Vincent van Rantwijk, MultiZilla
> On Apr 23, 6:13 pm, Johnny Stenback <j...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> After this all started there's been some comments in the bug and some
>> discussions on IRC etc. Robert Sayre suggested the name
>> "mozilla-central" in the bug, and while I'm not completely in love with
>> that name, it would work fine with me. It avoids the whole "trunk" name,
>> doesn't repeat "hg", etc etc.
>
> I'm ok with mozilla2-trunk or mozilla-central. Sounds like no one
> needs hg, not everyone wants 2 in the name (even though Benjamin and
> Colin are spot on about DVCS development), and trunk may be less
> helpful to non-English-as-first-language speakers.
*mozilla2-central* or maybe *mozilla2-base* will be fine to my
non-English-as-first-language ears ;)
> Really, we just need to pick one and go. Anyone mind if I do that? I'm
> favoring mozilla-central.
>
> /be
Not using a version number (2 in this case) in the name will be fine,
because a new repository will be cloned from the main (aka
mozilla-central) repository and the old one renamed to lets say
mozillaN-central? And that way mozilla-central can always be the
main/central development repository, until of course you'll want to
change it for something else.
Michael