[Geany-devel] Git Switch (again)

[Matthew Brush]

On 05/09/11 11:12, Colomban Wendling wrote:
> Le 09/05/2011 19:35, Jiří Techet a écrit :

>>
>> I'd say that VCS migration and bug tracking system migration should be
>> done separately and independently. Migration of the bug tracker is a
>> lot of work while migration to git is quite easy. I'd also be rather
>> cautious before moving the bug tracker to GitHub. At the moment they
>> are offering hosting of open source projects for free but there's no
>> guarantee it will be like that in the future as well. This is no
>> problem with the git repository if they get evil - you can always
>> upload the repository somewhere else and update a few links on the
>> geany's home page. However with the bug tracker it would be a much
>> more painful process.
>
> Well... this makes sense, but having the but tracker on SF and the code
> on GitHub seems a bit like a suboptimal option -- though since SF don't
> really link bug tracker and VCS maybe it'd not really change anything.

 From what I can tell, the majority of the bugs in the SF tracker are 
either closed, open but will never get resolved or no longer apply to 
current versions, so I don't know how much of a big deal it would be to 
start moving away from it, of course always leaving it (possibly 
read-only?) for reference.

>
> But the point on the possible future of GitHub is important IMO. if we
> have no guarantee for the long-term viability -- and when I read you I
> read "I'd not be really surprised if it happened" --, do we really want
> to use this? I mean, if we need to switch to another official repo next
> year because GitHub decided not to continue to provide (free) hosting
> for us, it'd not be really good.

Speculating on the future of any of the project hosting sites is just 
that, speculation.  They have different business models, like SF with ad 
revenue, GitHub with private paid accounts, Gitorious with extra 
services (and probably $ from Nokia), and Google Projects with Google's 
plan for total world domination.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say it would be more likely for SF to go 
belly up due to lousy services, mass exodus to better project sites and 
it not being financially worthwhile for GeekNet.

Put simply, AFAIK, none of these projects sites offer a guarantee that 
they will not shutdown, go paid only, or otherwise change their 
services, so I don't think speculation should be a primary factor in 
deciding on a project site.

>
> But yeah, switching to Git doesn't even mean going away from SF (though
> it couldn't be bad :D), they also offers Git repositories. Just no fancy
> around like merge requests, reviews&  co.

Still leaves the problems of slow services (though Git would probably be 
faster), crappy web interface, lack of forking (and others you 
mentioned) and having public forks attached to the project, crappy bug 
tracker, etc.

>
> I haven't either checked the other sites (Gitorious, ?) deeper, maybe
> they are good candidates if we don't want the BT functionality? don't
> know -- apart that I already have and account on Gitorious and wasn't
> scared by their policy.

I can't say I'm personally opposed to Gitorious, but to me it just seems 
like a stripped-down version of GitHub, missing lots of the cool 
features.  Of all the project hosting sites I've used though, the only 
two I really dislike are SourceForge and Launchpad followed farther by 
Google Projects.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush