Re: Git mirrors

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:56:26 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >> The decision on Bzr was political, not technical
> >
> > Yes, it was.  So was the decision to develop GNU Emacs, GCC, and the
> > whole GNU Project.  And your point is?
> 
> You are comparing apples to oranges. Emacs and GCC came into being
> because there was no available options that were Free and
> cooperative. Or else a decission to create a flagship for Free Software
> was taken. That does not fit the bzr case at all.

Sorry, I don't see the difference.  My point is that political
decisions are not necessarily bogus just _because_ they are political.

>     > I think it would benefit the GNU Emacs project, the Emacs developers and
>     > maintainers, and the Emacs community as a whole if there was an official
>     > read-only Git mirror of the Emacs repository that was updated with every
>     > Bazaar push.
> 
>     I just want to make the point that since Bazaar is a GNU project, IMO
>     this would not benefit the GNU project as a whole. (I'm not saying don't
>     do it, just making a point.)
> 
> That's my response too.

These are not objections.  Objection would be to say "no, don't do
this because I object".  Glenn said explicitly "I'm not saying don't
do it".

> > Objections _are_ made to force the Emacs project to do this work for
> > you,
> 
> No. There are people who are volunteering:
> 
> <quote>
> 
> > Trying to be constructive about this, this would be helpful, but presumably
> > a fully automatic sync is not possible, or someone would have done it by
> > now.

Then there's nothing to argue about, is there?  You don't actually
need to force people to agree with you, do you?  It is good enough to
have a reliable git mirror, isn't it?

Or is this a "political" dispute?

> I have my own fully-automated sync happening here on my own machine, using
> git-bzr and bzr-fast-import, so I can't imagine it would be any harder for a
> server to do.

I guess volunteers still have to do something, then.

> > If someone can do it, please work to get it done on Savannah so that we
> > never have to have this discussion again.
> 
> Give me ssh access and I'll do it.

Ask someone who can do it, like savannah admins.  I don't have such an
access myself.

> > when in fact the Emacs project already provides a reasonable
> > solution for distributed development and contribution to the project.
> 
> "Reasonable" is your opinion. Certainly it works, but it is a PITA to
> use for some of us.

It is PITA for me to use git, but I don't run back crying to the
projects who use it, and don't spread FUD about git, which I consider
a very good tool.

> > Let me turn the table and ask you: are you aware of any significant
> > number of projects that use git and provide a bzr gateway for those
> > who want that?  I have yet to see such a project.
> 
> I was involved on projects that were perfectly fine with providing bzr
> access at the request of users.

So we have one such project.  Or rather _had_ one such project.  Not a
lot to go by, I'd say.

> Please let's drop this argument.

Feel free.

> >> What I'm saying is that that does not send a friendly signal to
> >> other Free Software projects and representing GNU as an unfriendly
> >> competitor of other Free tools harms the cause of Free Software.
> >
> > I fail to see how this interpretation can be gleaned from what's been
> > said here.  Projects that use git as their VCS are not being accused
> > of being "unfriendly competitors" to the GNU Project, and I, for one,
> > don't think they are.  So what you say is simply unfair.  I hope
> > fairness is still a virtue around here.
> 
> You are completely dismissing history.

I'm not interested in history in this thread.  This thread is about
using the Emacs repository _now_.  Whatever problems were in the past,
they cannot possibly affect the efficiency of accessing the repository
from now on.