Re: Moving pkgsrc-wip away from SourceForge

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2015 at 09:10:58AM -0500, Jason Bacon wrote:
> One argument I haven't seen though, is a how CVS is superior (for our
> purposes) to other VCS's, aside from the obvious man-hours that will be
> consumed in a transition away from it.
> 
> As a frequent WIP user and contributor, I would love to see a move to a more
> efficient VCS, i.e. one that can do more off-line and has a richer set of
> commands and output options.

pkgsrc is a "packaging spec". Revision control requirements for such spec
are much simpler than those for the package itself. pkgsrc is not a
"development" per se. Hence the notions of distributed development etc.
are an overkill for pkgsrc.

A local repository to which you can commit sounds a fancy thing (and in
turn extra baggage) than necessity for such a small spec under revision
control. I am not sure what people mean by "do more off-line" in the
context of pkgsrc, that CVS' model restricts them from doing -
specifically in pkgsrc.

IMHO git is suited for a bazaar model of development where the development
is less centralized, more distributed, with merges being complex and
challenging.

pkgsrc is more of a cathedral model and I find it "controlled" rather than
"restrictive" by that. For package spec, as such merge issues are very
less likely as compared to the package development , but even if there
are, they better be faced sooner rather than later.

CVS reflects this philosophy more naturally than git does - again in
pkgsrc context.

I am not criticizing bazaar model or git. Just that it sounds more suited
for packages rather than package specs' revision control.


Mayuresh