[DRE-maint] Regarding your comment in my blog (re: Ruby Gems)

Micah Anderson micah at riseup.net
Tue Dec 9 16:59:19 UTC 2008


* Richard Hurt <rnhurt at kangaroobox.com> [2008-12-09 11:32-0500]:
> OK, I have to echo a few feelings on this as well.  Dr. Nic is right  
> in that we are using some old school tools and it is hard to onboard  
> new people.  Being a recent CVS convert I can't understand why we are  
> still on SVN and not Git.  Is this because the rest of the Debian  
> community has not moved to Git yet?  Also, it was *very* hard for me  
> to get up to speed on how this group operates and I still don't think  
> I'm quite there yet.

>   - Is there any thought around moving to Git?

Its funny because some people say opposite things: that Git is way too
hard and that Subversion is the more accessible revision control
mechanism which would enable more people to get involved quicker.

I dont want to start a VCS war or anything, but I just wanted to point
out that the Git learning curve is very steep for a lot of people, but
if switching to Git from SVN would mean a closer collaboration with
upstream Ruby Gem packaging, then it seems like it would be a win. I am
somewhat skeptical that there is a tangible benefit for doing so, but I
like Git too...

Putting all Debian's rubygems into GitHub would require paying money for
this service, when Debian has infrastructure for hosting git
repositories. I dont really think that its necessary to switch to using
GitHub, but its quite trivial for someone to send their stuff up to
GitHub, if they desire to do so, and Git is being used.

>   - Why are we still using mailman and not something more flexible?

This strikes me as kind of funny. Googlegroups is a modern OSS tool? I
personally find Googlegroups to be frustrating and annoying for
non-Google users to subscribe/post. Using it through GMANE is a
nightmare, there is no NOMAIL option for individual users, you have to
get the list admin to do it.

I have much less confidence that switching away from MailMan to
GoogleGroups will have a tangible benefit. Is it so hard to subscribe to
a MailMan list? After you have subscribed, what is the barrier here?
Seriously, I am baffled about this one.


> - How can we make it easier to onboard people and projects?

I was half expecting that the next assertion was going to be that
everyone has to switch to TextMate and Mac OS X, because these are
modern OSS tools.

I think its a good idea to try and get more involvement from the Ruby
community, and get more people involved. However, I am very suspicious
that switching away from MailMan is going to bring in a rush of
people....

micah
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