Re: Git mirrors

[Óscar Fuentes]

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.

>> and now objections are made to adding support for other Free tools
>> as a service to those contributors that consider them more
>> convenient.
>
> No, there are no objections to that.  You (or anyone else) are free to
> set out to make that happen, whether on Savannah or elsewhere.

That's not how do I interpret this reaction:

<quote>

    > 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.

</quote>

> 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.

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.

> 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.

</quote>

> 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.

> 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. And here "users" means "Óscar". Then I
switched to git and nobody asked for bzr support since.

But are you suggesting that git users are reluctant to provide bzr
access to the projects were they participate? Is this about rejecting
the setup of a working git mirror for Emacs because some project out
there rejected to setup a bzr mirror? Please let's drop this argument.

[snip]

>> 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 sure you can recall how bzr
was chosen and the whole saga until it was operational. When the
decission of using bzr was made, it was a niche tool with known heavy
performance problems that required more than a year to fix while
mercurial and git were perfectly fit, with a git mirror of the CVS repo
in working state. The message to Free Software developers is clear:
"either bow to GNU, or your work will be ignored by us, no matter how
excellent it is."  And this is where I ask: is GNU an end on itself or a
means to promote Free Software? Is it about the success of GNU or the
success of Free Software?