Git / Evergreen development discussion notes

Git tracks commits - includes metadata such as description, signed-off-by lines, etc along with the actual code patches

• If git complains about a non-fast-forward update, DO NOT FORCE A PUSH!
  • ACTION: Prevent non-fast-forward updates on main topic branches (branches that have been shared with the world) (DONE)
• ACTION: Adopt naming convention for branches that should not be pulled from
  • For example, wip/foobar = work in progress = pull at your own risk
  • lp####### for a branch for a Launchpad bug
    • dbs would start with dbs/lp1234567 for trunk; when happy, push to bugs/lp1234567 for trunk
    • then backport to dbs/rel_2_0/lp1234567 and push to bugs/rel_2_0/lp1234567

• We would like to promote the use of a central git repository for both main and non-main trees
• To set up a new non-main tree generally requires interested party to send the git maintainer a pubkey & email address
• We would like to be reasonably open - but must assert that any committed code is a) relevant to Evergreen and b) DCO'ed and licensed under GPL v2-or-later
• In the new regime, a committer would be someone who has the ability to push to master branch and create tags
• Possible to give multiple people the ability to push into a single branch (eg. collaborative topic branch like MARC-must-die, QA staging branch)
• ACTION: Galen will manage the git server (at least to begin with). DONE
• ACTION: Invite tsbere to join Galen in administering gitolite UPDATE tsbere invited and has accepted. DONE, tsbere is active
• ACTION: ILS-Contrib needs to move to central repository (as an ILS-contrib tree) UPDATE 2011-05-14 start with website, which is being set up as a separate repo

• Goals are to:
  1. Make the patches comprehensible (one logical unit per patch - like a bullet point in a slide)
  2. Enable the patches to make sense as a series (get rid of the 'gah' commits)
• One option: Interactive rebase at point that QA is satisfied
• Please continue to separate whitespace commits from substantive commits
• Get used to the notion of having code sit in the topic branch for some time to be reviewed / tested
• tig is an ncurses-based interface for browsing the commit history

• git-format-patch is much nicer as it tracks metadata such as author, etc, rather than having to do it manually
• Create a local branch
• Use git am to apply the patch
• Test
  • If the patch is perfect, push it to a public branch
  • If the patch is 90% good, but needs fixes; commit the patch as-is and commit a follow-up patch to clean it up (this avoids merge conflicts when the patch contributor pulls from master subsequently)
• Patch wrangler?
• ACTION: Follow-up with Chris Sharp on git.evergreen-ils.org server. UPDATE 2011-05-02 Request sent to Chris Sharp; awaiting date for when GPLS IT can create the VM. DONE

1. git-svn clone to seed the master repository (OpenSRF and ILS at the same time)
   • Bring tags along - but only for SVN tags, not one per revision (git-svn applies a git-svn-id with the revision number) DONE
2. Gather committers' public keys UPDATE 2011-05-14: underway; some committers are either on vacation or are apparently inactive
3. Test repository (go or no go)
4. Pick a weekend for cutting over (at least a week after release: Galen suggests Saturday, May 14) DONE for Evergreen and OpenSRF

• Modify Web site references to SVN
  • Contributing document (update references, git-format-patch) UPDATE 2011-05-14: well under way
  • Policies for being added to the repo server
  • Suggested naming conventions UPDATE 2011-05-14: underway, see #evergreen logs
  • Statement on Evergreen interpretation of Signed-off-by DONE
• Wiki references to SVN UPDATE 2011-05-14: major references updated; still a number of minor references to clean up
• Check codebase for SVN references (such as staff client installer auto build ID) UPDATE 2011-05-14; direct references removed; phasefx and tsbere looking at the build ID issue
• DIG manual references
• Blog post / mailing list DONE
• Make SVN Trac page say "read-only" for each gitted repository DONE
• Teach continuous integration server about git DONE
• Freshmeat DONE / Ohloh DONE / Launchpad master branch replaced SVN trunk, but seems to be a limit of a single branch that can be tracked? Also, need to retarget all "trunk" issues to "master"?
• (Per comment by Jeff Godin on 2011-05-02) set up master to send updates to Evergreen commits mailing list. DONE tsbere++