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Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

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Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#11

Post by viraptor »

toggle wrote: post #8
impostervt wrote: post #3

I really thought it was an April fools joke...

I read their Jira thread, and I was convinced it was a joke, too. The project manager mentioned some poll that no one else had heard of, and then other people kept coming up with reasons as to why it made sense to have had a short poll for such a major issue. I just assumed they were stringing everyone else along. :P Honestly, if this isn't a joke, I think it doesn't really make SVN look bad (or dead). SVN's remainin…

I don't think it's a joke really. The ticket and a couple of comments would look like one. But multiple project leaders commenting more than once and (acting as if) getting quite annoyed with each other would be a massive waste of time for the whole org on a joke that doesn't need to be this long.

At this point, I think it's real...

Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#12

Post by grkvlt »

I'm kind of confused at the people who thought this was an April Fool joke. Really? If the announcement was on a news site or blog, maybe, but a 'Task' issue on the INFRA JIRA is hardly the appropriate venue. Although, it seems that @jimjag (the ASF director) was pretty pissed at the Subversion PMC and lead [1] for making the decision without consulting the community, just taking a vote from the committers.

Note that the interesting part of this is the move to use Git as the back end storage engine for Subversion eventually, with 'svn' being just a client API. The code is available now in the 'ra-git' branch. [2] Also, see @gstein's comment to the committer, noting that using a Git repo for Subversion code will simplify testing the new libsvn_ra_git client when it's available:

> So I'll be able to use the svn client to check out from the ASF git repo? Awesome. [...] We can dogfood svn against our own repo. Thanks, Stefan

[1] https://twitter.com/jimjag/status/450999640583053312 [2] http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=revision&revision=r1583639

Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#14

Post by mantrax4 »

A joke or not, this makes SVN look bad.

As a SVN user I don't appreciate the message here. Every piece of technology is a platform that needs mindshare to survive. If it has no mindshare, it might as well be an excellent piece of engineering, but it'll still disappear.

In a perfectly rational world, with perfect communication, and universal understanding of everything, it wouldn't be a big deal - SVN and Git have different best use cases.

But in our real world, this action gives excellent bullets for the anti-SVN people to use now in any discussion bringing Git vs. SVN.

Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#15

Post by peeters »

I think tons of companies battle with the limitations of "we should eat our own dog food." It tends to be a general rule, even when you as an organization have only marginal overlap with your target market.

I applaud Greg Stein's response (Stein is the founder and VP who was against the move):

> The short of it is: the Apache Subversion project chose this. We want to get our stuff coded and released. For our backend, we don't need the super-huge repositories that Subversion supports. Our project stores some binaries, but we can make Git work for us. We have no need for Subversion's fine-grained authorization ... shoot. We allow ALL ASF committers access to our repository. There are no barriers to the migration here, and some of the stuff that Infra has done for integration with GitHub? Pretty cool. Positives, and only little negatives.

I love seeing this commitment to the community and developers.

Edit though for completeness on the whole "dogfood" issue, this is another comment Stein made:

>So I'll be able to use the svn client to check out from the ASF git repo? Awesome. (...) We can dogfood svn against our own repo.

Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#16

Post by StevePerkins »

I'm STILL not convinced that this is a real story, and not an ongoing April Fool's prank. We'll see later in the week.

However, even if it DOES turn out to be legit... how dumb would you have to be to make any major announcement over the Internet on 4/1? Much less raise a question, conduct only a few hours of discussion and polling, and then make your final decision within a few hours... all on a day where most of the people commenting on that Jira ticket probably thought they were participating in a joke.

This is either the most well-played April Fool's joke since "OMG Ponies!!!", or else the absolute dumbest thing I have ever seen Apache do.

Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#17

Post by [deleted] »

mantrax4 wrote: post #14

A joke or not, this makes SVN look bad. As a SVN user I don't appreciate the message here. Every piece of technology is a platform that needs mindshare to survive. If it has no mindshare, it might as well be an excellent piece of engineering, but it'll still disappear. In a perfectly rational world, with perfect communication, and universal understanding of everything, it wouldn't be a big deal - SVN and Git have dif…

[deleted]

Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#18

Post by TallGuyShort »

Unless the author actually has access to the private mailing list where the vote supposedly took place, I still call BS. I believe this was a prank. I'm familiar with many of the commenters on the JIRA and they were very much out of their normal character.

Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#19

Post by to3m »

mantrax4 wrote: post #14

A joke or not, this makes SVN look bad. As a SVN user I don't appreciate the message here. Every piece of technology is a platform that needs mindshare to survive. If it has no mindshare, it might as well be an excellent piece of engineering, but it'll still disappear. In a perfectly rational world, with perfect communication, and universal understanding of everything, it wouldn't be a big deal - SVN and Git have dif…

I can't see this working out poorly for the pro-SVN people one way or the other. If you'd probably be better off with git, you should use git - but svn will certainly prove workable enough in the same situation. On the other hand, if you'd be better off with svn, most likely due to its locking functionality, by comparison git is very likely to prove painful enough to warrant a switch.

Ideally this will cement SVN's position in its niche. Most git users seem to deny that this niche even exists, but I think it is there. I see SVN's more natural competitor as Perforce (which currently beats SVN as handily as git does, though from the opposite direction), but its maintainers seem not to be bothering to take it on, presumably due to their perception of SVN's position in the marketplace. Were they to admit that it's lost to git on what has become git's home turf, which it seems that they're doing, perhaps this would help focus attention elsewhere...

Re: Apache Subversion to Migrate to Git

#20

Post by stormbrew »

StevePerkins wrote: post #16

I'm STILL not convinced that this is a real story, and not an ongoing April Fool's prank. We'll see later in the week. However, even if it DOES turn out to be legit... how dumb would you have to be to make any major announcement over the Internet on 4/1? Much less raise a question, conduct only a few hours of discussion and polling, and then make your final decision within a few hours... all on a day where most of th…

Real announcements do happen on April 1st. See for example gmail [1], perhaps one of the most important product announcements in the last decade.

Though I admit, I sometimes expect them to announce that it was a joke all along and shut it down.

[1] http://googlepress.blogspot.ca/2004/04/google-gets-message-l...

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