Migrate from darcs to git/github?

[peter ljunglöf]

Hi,

here's a controversial suggestion, but I think it would improve the GF repository: Let's migrate the GF repository from Darcs to Git, and put it on GitHub.

Currently the man GF repo is stored in Darcs, on a computer at the CSE department. Nothing wrong with Darcs, it's good and all. But I think that Git is so much more useful, and it will be for many years to come. There are two main reasons, and (at least) one minor:

1. There are graphical Git clients which are very easy to use. Personally I use Atlassian's SourceTree, but there are several other alternatives. According to this page, there is nothing like that for Darcs:

http://darcs.net/RelatedSoftware

2. GitHub is really really useful! It's easy to clone repos, it supports several workflows, and has a decent bugtracker. It's also the biggest open-source repository site.

One very nice feature with GitHub is "pull requests". Any person can make a change to the GF source and commit to their personal GF clone. Then they can submit a "pull request" to the main GF repo, and one of the core developers (with write access to the main repo) can test out this pull request and apply it.

3. Since more people are comfortable with Git than with Darcs, it's hopefully easier to get people to start working on the code.


If we only compare the command-line clients, I'd say that Darcs and Git are comparable. (Ok, Darcs has a logical theory behind it, but that doesn't make it easier to use). (Oh, and Darcs is written in Haskell, but doesn't make it easier to use either:).

But I don't think that Darcs will get any good GUI tools in a long while -- there are simply too few users.


Of course, there are several alternatives to Git (Bazaar, Mercurial)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_software

...and hosting facilities (Bitbucket, Google Code, SourceForge)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_software_hosting_facilities

...and I'm ok with any of them, as long as they have good GUI tools, and that the host has many good features.


Thoughts, comments?

/Peter

[Aarne Ranta]

https://github.com/GrammaticalFramework/GF/

[peter ljunglöf]

13 sep 2012 kl. 16:09 skrev Aarne Ranta:

> https://github.com/GrammaticalFramework/GF/

Aha! But how does this work? There is one Darcs repo and one GitHub repo, is one of them a master-master repo?

What if I clone the Git repo and make some changes, can I make a Pull Request in GitHub?

/Peter

[John J. Camilleri]

The GitHub repository of GF is just a mirror of the darcs one, and it is mono-directional.

For what it's worth I completely agree with Peter - I also swear by git and see no point in sticking with darcs, other than the legacy argument.

John

[Rogan Creswick]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 5:02 AM, John J. Camilleri
<jo...@johnjcamilleri.com> wrote:
> The GitHub repository of GF is just a mirror of the darcs one, and it is
> mono-directional.

ah, that's too bad!

I also prefer git to darcs. My VCS needs are just complex enough that
switching between VCSs can cause (local) data loss, and quite a bit of
frustration when I forget which VCS is which. (for example, git and
darcs have different assumptions about untracked files).

--Rogan

[Aarne Ranta]

Dear All,

Thanks for the lively discussion! 

Since most users of the repo's don't commit code but only want to get updated by the latest sources, we found it adequate to start with a read-only mirror Git. I have also found it to be a great way to browse the code and get meta information about it.

But now there also seems to be majority (at least of the people writing to this discussion) who want Git to be the main repo, instead of Darcs. I understand that there are many advantages, and have personally nothing against it. However, we should be analytical and see both the pros and the cons. Hence I would like to give a chance to Darcs supporters to say what they would miss if we shifted to Git. Please post these arguments here!

And a question to Git supporters: might this also give a better solution to our bug tracking? It would be ideal if the bug tracker was accessible in the same place as the source code, as yet another kind of metadata attached to the code. Peter suggests this is possible - can you give pointers to some projects where this is used?

Regards

  Aarne.

[Kaarel Kaljurand]

Hi,

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Aarne Ranta <aa...@chalmers.se> wrote:
>
> And a question to Git supporters: might this also give a better solution to
> our bug tracking?

this is more the question about which Git hosting to choose. To GitHub
there are also alternatives, e.g. Bitbucket.

> It would be ideal if the bug tracker was accessible in the
> same place as the source code, as yet another kind of metadata attached to
> the code. Peter suggests this is possible - can you give pointers to some
> projects where this is used?

E.g. this is the issues list of the most "starred" project on GitHub:

https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues

One can attach labels, code, comments, assignees, milestones to issue
reports. The comments are written in an extended version of Markdown
which allows you to reference GitHub commits, users, etc. from the
comment. And you can also reference issues from commit messages (by
e.g. "Fix #123").

The GitHub pull requests are explained here:

https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests

Voting also for Git+GitHub,
Kaarel

[John J. Camilleri]

Well no one has made a single attempt at defending darcs :P

If we really do decide to move to GitHub, would it be as simple as making the GitHub repository writeable, and turning off/freezing the darcs repository?

Or is there more to it than that? How should the final decision be made? A Doodle perhaps?

John

[Jyrki Nummenmaa]

I guess even the darcs maintainers / creators / developers have no faith in darcs.

I installed the Haskell platform 2012.2.0.0 directly from the download and the next

thing I tried to do was

cabal update

cabal install darcs

and it did not install due to some library incompatibility or so. 

-Jyrki

[Normunds Grūzītis]

I also just installed Haskell platform 2012.2.0.0 on a fresh machine.
After "cabal update" + "cabal install cabal-install" the "cabal
install darcs" succeeded (with thousand warnings though).
Nevertheless, I vote for git (and GitHub).

Regards,
Normunds


2012/10/27 Jyrki Nummenmaa <jyrki.n...@gmail.com>:

[peter ljunglöf]

Hi,

now I'll try to get this thread live again! Darcs is a pain when you (like me) update at irregular intervals. Now when I tried to update to the latest GF, there were 133 patches. After 1/2 hour darcs had only applied half of them, and I accidentally closed the terminal window. Then when I tried to update again, I had conflicts in three files and then I gave up.

I have now officially moved to the GF Github mirror. It took 10 seconds to clone the GF repo to my computer...

When/if I do some changes, I'll just spam someone who knows darcs better than me with my patches :)

best,
/Peter

PS. If there will be a descision to migrate to Git, I propose to split the repo in two: one for GF and one for the resource grammar. Or even three: One for the runtime, one for the compiler, and then the RGL.

[Kaarel Kaljurand]

Hi,

I'm voting for Git+GitHub.

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:35 PM, peter ljunglöf
<peter.l...@heatherleaf.se> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> now I'll try to get this thread live again! Darcs is a pain when you (like me) update at irregular intervals. Now when I tried to update to the latest GF, there were 133 patches. After 1/2 hour darcs had only applied half of them, and I accidentally closed the terminal window. Then when I tried to update again, I had conflicts in three files and then I gave up.
>
> I have now officially moved to the GF Github mirror. It took 10 seconds to clone the GF repo to my computer...

The same thing happened to me. I did a dracs pull, it took too long so
I did Ctrl-C on it and ended up in a broken state. Now pulling only
from GitHub and living with the once-a-day update schedule.

> PS. If there will be a descision to migrate to Git, I propose to split the repo in two: one for GF and one for the resource grammar. Or even three: One for the runtime, one for the compiler, and then the RGL.

I also think that the RGL should be versioned separately, also at the
commit level.

Best regards,
Kaarel

[John J. Camilleri]

I have to agree with you both.

I see absolutely no advantage to darcs, or any argument in favour of it - but many arguments in favour of Git and Github.

Kaarel

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[Rogan Creswick]

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 6:35 AM, peter ljunglöf <peter.l...@heatherleaf.se> wrote:

PS. If there will be a descision to migrate to Git, I propose to split the repo in two: one for GF and one for the resource grammar. Or even three: One for the runtime, one for the compiler, and then the RGL.

Two repos sounds like a good idea to me, but I think moving to git+github is more important (and they can be done separately).

--Rogan

[Olga Caprotti]

you are a subversive crowd, me too.

--olga

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