Fixing repository conversion errors.

[Eric S. Raymond]

Dani Moncayo <address@hidden>:
> Merge from emacs-24; up to 117669
> Merge from emacs-24; up to 117687
> Merge from emacs-24; up to 117689
> Revert 118323.
> Merge from emacs-24; up to 117691
> Merge from emacs-24; up to 117698
> Merge from emacs-24; up to 117702

Well, crap.  I don't know how those got by me. It probably has
someting to do with them all being bare numbers rather than prefixed
with "r" or "rev.".  There were an awful lot of false matches for 
[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] that I has to wade through by hand. There
were anout 700 changes of this kind, all told.

The cost if fixing this is:

(a) when I do it, everyone will have to reclone afterwards.

(b) Probably about four hours of repo downtime. It won't be ten this time
because I don't have to do another full conversion, just edit a pulled copy, 
repack it, and upload it.

It won't be any worse if we wait a week than if I do it tomorrow.  I'm
inclined to wait for a bit and see if any other minor problems turn up.
Ideally we only want to have to do this once.

We need a procedure for this - I don't want us to lose another day and
a half.  Copying Bob Proulx.  Here's how I think it should go:

(1) We test a blocking repo hook that says "Closed for all pushes."

(2) We schedule a maintainance day.

(3) On that day, the blocking hook goes in place.  Repo is still
available read-only.

(3) I fix a downloaded copy, repack it, and upload it to Savannah 
as a tarball via ftp or scp.

(4) Bob unpacks it on the same filesystem as the live repo, them moves
the directory into place (an atomic operation).

Bob, are you willing to do this?
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>