GNOME to migrate to git

From: Lucas Rocha <lucasr gnome org>

To: devel-announce-list gnome org, "gnome-i18n gnome org" <gnome-i18n gnome org>, Gnome Doc List <gnome-doc-list gnome org>, desktop-devel-list <desktop-devel-list gnome org>, gnome-infrastructure gnome org

Subject: GNOME to migrate to git

Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:04:33 +0000

The GNOME Release Team would like to announce that git will be the new Version Control System (VCS) for GNOME. In our opinion, the decision reflects the opinion of the majority of our active contributors. In December 2008, Behdad Esfahbod organized the GNOME DVCS (Distributed Version Control System) Survey on behalf of the GNOME Foundation board of directors, Release Team, and Sysadmin Team with the aim of better understanding familiarity and preferences of our active contributor base regarding the future VCS for GNOME. The survey results[1], released in January 2009, show that git is by far the preferred DVCS for the majority of our active contributors - the main users of GNOME infrastructure. Elijah Newren has made an in-depth analysis of the results[2]. Since January 2009, a group of brave contributors (Owen Taylor, Kristian Høgsberg, Behdad Esfahbod, Federico Quintero, and others) have been working on the migration of our Subversion repositories to git[3]. The git migration team is documenting their progress at: http://live.gnome.org/GitMigration The new git.gnome.org server is now in good shape and contains a functional preview of all GNOME git repositories. The official migration of all our Subversion repositories to git will take place just after the 2.26.1 release, on April 16. The git migration team is now working on sorting out the last details of the migration and providing complete documentation on how to use git on daily GNOME contributions (for documentors, translators, developers, etc). By migrating in the very beginning of the 2.27.x development cycle, we'll be able to work out any issues very early in the development cycle and give enough time for contributors to get used to the new VCS. We realize that git is not perfect, and that the transition will require significant and important changes to many GNOME processes. With that in mind, we hope that more community members will step forward to help making the process as efficient and painless as possible. We'd like to invite the community to: a) help us to provide accurate documentation for documentors, translators and developers; b) test the preview repositories in git.gnome.org and help the git migration team on finding and fixing any issues in the repositories you work on. For instance, modules using svn externals need decision from their respective maintainers[5]. If you'd like to help, subcribe to gnome-infrastructure[4] and report/discuss any issues you find there. Cheers! The GNOME Release Team [1] http://www.gnome.org/~behdad/dvcs-survey/ [2] http://blogs.gnome.org/newren/2009/01/03/gnome-dvcs-survey-results/ [3] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2009-January/msg00137.html [4] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-infrastructure [5] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-infrastructure/2009-March/msg00054.html