2012.12.19 17:02 "[Tiff] CVS server unreachable?", by Tom Lane

2012.12.28 03:55 "Re: [Tiff] CVS server unreachable?", by Larry Gritz

On 26 Dec 2012 11:03:54, Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:

I do find Git to be complex and I found Hg to be much simpler to learn, particularly coming from CVS.

I'm a user of libtiff, but not a contributor of code, so in some sense I don't have a dog in this race. But I vote for Git, and I'll explain why.

I run two other open source projects (both started as CVS, now both Git on GitHub), one of which has participated in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) for several years, which has afforded me the opportunity to attend their post-summer "mentor summit" in which senior people from the 100 or so projects participating in GSoC all get together for a conference.

When I went in 2011 (or was it 2010?), I was at the time considering git but hadn't used it. But I left committed to switching, for the simple reason that in almost all the conference sessions, and in all the casual meetings of senior people of other OSS projects, git was mentioned. Nearly every single project had either switched to git, was in the process of doing so, or was loudly lamenting that they wanted to but political or technical hurdles made it impossible. Maybe one or two projects (out of 100) were advocating or using Hg, and there was nobody talking at all about any other source control strategies.

It was extremely clear to me that git was the future, particularly for open source projects. The impression I came away with was that if you want your project to attract young energetic new contributors, you need to be on git. Sticking to CVS will, whether you want to or not, loudly scream "we are old farts, there is nothing cool going on here" to the next generation of contributors. Other more modern, but more obscure, systems may also be a non-starter. I don't necessarily claim that git is any better technically than Hg, but it's so much more popular overall among open source projects and contributors, that itself is an inherent advantage.

As far as git complexity, I thought that at first, too, but once I wrapped my head around it, it turned out to be just fine, and now I really love it. I have a really good "cheat sheet" I assembled in the process of learning, if anybody wants a copy.

--
Larry Gritz
lg@larrygritz.com