[ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Øyvind Harboe]

Does anyone know a reason not to switch to git for eCosForge?

My thinking is to use http://repo.or.cz/ to host projects.

www.ecosforge.net uses a version of subversion that is getting
a bit long in the tooth (1.4) and I'm just wondering if
git isn't a better choice anyway....

The plan is to leave the current subversion repository as-is and
let migration happen  eventually, deleting old repositories(they
are still there in the history) after migration to git.

The idea is to have one git repository per eCos repository(or
project if you will).

The first project I would like to switch to git, is nios2ecos.

--
Øyvind Harboe
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Re: [ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Alex Schuilenburg]

Øyvind Harboe wrote on 2009-09-17 11:52:
> Does anyone know a reason not to switch to git for eCosForge?
>
> My thinking is to use http://repo.or.cz/ to host projects.
>
> www.ecosforge.net uses a version of subversion that is getting
> a bit long in the tooth (1.4) and I'm just wondering if
> git isn't a better choice anyway....
>
> The plan is to leave the current subversion repository as-is and
> let migration happen  eventually, deleting old repositories(they
> are still there in the history) after migration to git.
>
> The idea is to have one git repository per eCos repository(or
> project if you will).
>
> The first project I would like to switch to git, is nios2ecos.
>   

Why git in particular? 

We have started looking at switching to another RCS at eCosCentric as
well.  In particular I looked at three distributed RCS solutions: git,
bazaar and mercurial.  While there is no doubt that git is the most
powerful of the three solutions and also fastest on linux, it is also
the most complex of the three solutions with a very steep initial
learning curve, it's support for windows is lacking, and its
documentation is sparse and confusing.  As a tool for experienced Linux
developers, sure, git is the best choice.  But for the average eCos
developer,  I am not convinced.

The choice of an alternative RCS should also take into consideration
Windows users, as well as speed and ease of use.  When it came down to
it, I found mercurial only to be marginally slower than git, but far
better documented, easier to learn, and with much better support on
Windows platforms. Bazaar was slower than mercurial and also was not as
well documented, although Windows support was pretty much the same as
mercurial.  Both bazaar and mercurial were a lot easier to learn and
work with than git.  git's Windows support is also limited and is mostly
restricted to the 100's of cmd apps which make up git under cygwin.
Bazaar and mercurial are native windows apps, so speed comparisons
worked in their favour on Windows.

I intend to do a more formal evaluation of all three, also drawing in
user's experiences from the web, which I will be happy to write up here
when complete if people think it is worthwhile.  The topic of ecos
switching to another RCS has already been raised once before and nothing
much came of this so I am offering a proper evaluation of pros and cons
before a choice is made, for a proposal for an anoncvs alternative RCS
solution anyway.

Anyway, I should point out that all three DRCS appear to have tools that
allow for the migration and/or import/export of changesets between them,
so in theory any choice on what anyone uses in-house can be left to
personal preference regardless of what the main repository is. I cannot
speak for these tools, other than to say I have tried to import our
internal CVS repository and anoncvs into all three and not one of them
worked.  git did the worst job, followed by bazaar then mercurial. And
yes, I have tried cvs2svn to go via svn as well :-(

However, more worryingly these attempted imports showed that both our
and the anoncvs CVS respositories are corrupt, which is probably why the
imports failed so badly using the automated tools.  Any attempted
conversion of anoncvs is going to need a fair amount of effort by
someone. That said, I should point out that I am in the process of
developing/converting our own repository using a modified cvsps 2.2beta
that can fix most of the corruption in conjunction with a perl script
which fixes the rest, so may end up with a tool which correctly converts
anoncvs (i.e. preserving all check-in states, tags and history) to
whatever with little human effort.

Don't panic though, checking out current anoncvs always works.  Just do
not rely on tags and branches.  Checkouts made at the same time as tags
were made have shown several files that were missed being tagged, making
what was actually distributed differ from what was tagged, and files
missing from branches.  As an early example, checkout the
ecos-v2_0-branch just after it was made and observe that doc/Changelog
is missing, even though it was present in the trunk when the branch was
made.  This is just one case of 100's

However, I suspect your switch from svn to whatever will be fairly
simple.  The import/export tools do a fine job on most simple repositories.

HTH

-- Alex Schuilenburg

   >>>> Visit us at ESC-Boston  http://www.embedded.com/esc/boston <<<<
   >>>> Sep 22-23 on Stand 226  at Hynes Convention Center, Boston <<<<

          **** Visit us at ESC-UK  http://www.embedded.co.uk ****
          **** Oct 7-8 on Stand 433 at FIVE ISC, Farnborough ****



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Re: [ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Øyvind Harboe]

First of all: great to hear you're looking to upgrade from CVS to
distributed development. A ~20 year leap in tools, bound to be
tricky that one :-)

> Why git in particular?

No reason not to really.

git is easy to use when cloning/downloading + web interfaces exist
where you can download snapshots.

+ git is becoming more of a required skill for embedded development
as Linux requires it, so I looked a bit at mercurial, but didn't really
feel like learning more than one of these distributed systems.. it's
been a while
that anybody suggested or wanted anything but git as an alternative
to svn in the circles I frequent. I'm sure git tools will improve with time.
We're looking 5-10 years into the future here, right?

> The choice of an alternative RCS should also take into consideration
> Windows users, as well as speed and ease of use.

Web interfaces on the server kinda take care of my greatest
concern about those that do not want or need to learn git.

They can wget + tar ...., no version control system at all involved.

Also there are nice git server sites for those that have some
pet project they are working on and want to share, e.g.
http://repo.or.cz/, which pretty much fills the role that
www.ecosforge.net has had up to now


The above said, I don't think I'll care if eCos CVS switches to
git or mercurial. Mercurial is next on my list of distributed systems
to look into and if I only did closed source development, probably
the preferred solution.


-- 
Øyvind Harboe
Embedded software and hardware consulting services
http://www.zylin.com

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Re: [ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Øyvind Harboe]

> The same could be said of any of the three :-)

My situation is that I have no choice but to learn git.
Linux forced me to. eCos could force me to learn
about mercurial as well. I'm try to be economic
with the # of tools that I teach myself.

> However, for distributed development, not using proper DRSC tools, whichever
> you choose, is foolhardy IMHO.

DRSC?

> I dont think you can say mercurial (or hg for short) is better for closed
> source.

I meant to say that I found mercurial nicer & friendlier at first
glance, so if I didn't have to interact w/open source *at all*,
then mercurial looked more attractive to me. As the
case was, I was forced to learn git first.


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[ECOS] Re: Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Grant Edwards]

On 2009-09-17, ??yvind Harboe <oyvind.harboe@zylin.com> wrote:

> + git is becoming more of a required skill for embedded development
> as Linux requires it,

Can you explain how "Linux requires it"?  I've been using Linux
for almost 15 years now (including some embedded Linux stuff),
and have no clue how to use git.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! Now KEN and BARBIE
                                  at               are PERMANENTLY ADDICTED to
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Re: [ECOS] Re: Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Ross Younger]

> On 2009-09-17, ??yvind Harboe <oyvind.harboe@zylin.com> wrote:
>> + git is becoming more of a required skill for embedded development
>> as Linux requires it,

Grant Edwards wrote:
> Can you explain how "Linux requires it"?  

The Linux kernel source tree has been managed with git - pretty exclusively,
I think - for a handful of years now. It really comes into its own with the
various teams working on their own subtrees.

Torvalds himself designed and wrote the initial version of git following the
BitKeeper debacle and given the then-current state of the art; it has then
evolved into a fully-featured DRCS, but with a slightly different world-view
to hg and bzr.


Ross

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Re: [ECOS] Re: Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Patrick Doyle]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Grant Edwards
<grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2009-09-17, ??yvind Harboe <oyvind.harboe@zylin.com> wrote:
>> + git is becoming more of a required skill for embedded development
>> as Linux requires it,
>
> Can you explain how "Linux requires it"?  I've been using Linux
> for almost 15 years now (including some embedded Linux stuff),
> and have no clue how to use git.


Why it's quite simple, actually...

Linus Torvalds invented Linux.

Linus Torvalds invented git.

Therefore, git == Linux

:-)

--wpd

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Re: [ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Patrick Doyle]

It has been quite some time since I was last doing any eCos
development work (although I have lurked here ever since).  Since that
time I have started using git and have felt that, when next I rejoin
the eCos development community, I was going to investigate using git
with eCos.

What happened previously was that we would grab an eCos snapshot of
some vintage, develop the HAL for our custom board, and somewhat
sporadically resync to the main development tree.  I'm nowhere close
to being a git expert, but from what I've seen, this should be made
much simpler with git than it ever was with SVN.

I don't have any experience with bazaar or mecurial, but if they
support the ease of forking and resyncing branches that git supports,
then I imagine I could learn to be happy with one of those.

Your comments about the support/lack of support/ for Windows is
compelling, as I have also worked in an environment where I was the
lone Linux guy in a sea (ok, a puddle) of Windows users.  I'm
perfectly happy typing obscure strings of characters on a command
line, but have seen that I am in a minority there.

Don't know if this helps, but it's my .02 on the matter.

--wpd

Alex -- I apologize if you've gotten this twice -- gmail, qmail, and I
are not communicating well this morning :-)

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Re: [ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Alex Schuilenburg]

Patrick Doyle wrote on 2009-09-17 14:10:
> It has been quite some time since I was last doing any eCos
> development work (although I have lurked here ever since).  Since that
> time I have started using git and have felt that, when next I rejoin
> the eCos development community, I was going to investigate using git
> with eCos.
>
> What happened previously was that we would grab an eCos snapshot of
> some vintage, develop the HAL for our custom board, and somewhat
> sporadically resync to the main development tree.  I'm nowhere close
> to being a git expert, but from what I've seen, this should be made
> much simpler with git than it ever was with SVN.
>   
I think we should stay away from SVN.  The generally accepted model
nowadays for open source development is to use a distributed revision
control system, which SVN is not.

As Øyvind said, we need to get into the 21st century.


> I don't have any experience with bazaar or mecurial, but if they
> support the ease of forking and resyncing branches that git supports,
> then I imagine I could learn to be happy with one of those.
>
> Your comments about the support/lack of support/ for Windows is
> compelling, as I have also worked in an environment where I was the
> lone Linux guy in a sea (ok, a puddle) of Windows users.  I'm
> perfectly happy typing obscure strings of characters on a command
> line, but have seen that I am in a minority there.
>
> Don't know if this helps, but it's my .02 on the matter.
>   
Thanks for the feedback.  You may be in a minority, but you are not
alone ;-)

-- Alex Schuilenburg

   >>>> Visit us at ESC-Boston  http://www.embedded.com/esc/boston <<<<
   >>>> Sep 22-23 on Stand 226  at Hynes Convention Center, Boston <<<<

          **** Visit us at ESC-UK  http://www.embedded.co.uk ****
          **** Oct 7-8 on Stand 433 at FIVE ISC, Farnborough ****



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Re: [ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Øyvind Harboe]

Using DRCS's doesn't make development distributed.

It's perfectly possible to use e.g. git in a non-distributed fashion.

> I think we should stay away from SVN.  The generally accepted model
> nowadays for open source development is to use a distributed revision
> control system, which SVN is not.

Well... there is a slight twist to that one.

Some use git(and I guess hg too) as a client to svn.

It works quite well.

eCos isn't handled in a distributed fashion today, e.g. with
each maintainer and all the contributers having their
own repository that things are pulled from. In that
regard svn + git clients might work well.

Perhaps eCos should switch to a more distributed model
though.


-- 
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[ECOS] Re: Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Sergei Organov]

Alex Schuilenburg <alexs@ecoscentric.com> writes:
> Øyvind Harboe wrote on 2009-09-17 11:52:
>> Does anyone know a reason not to switch to git for eCosForge?
>>
>> My thinking is to use http://repo.or.cz/ to host projects.
>>
>> www.ecosforge.net uses a version of subversion that is getting
>> a bit long in the tooth (1.4) and I'm just wondering if
>> git isn't a better choice anyway....
>>
>> The plan is to leave the current subversion repository as-is and
>> let migration happen  eventually, deleting old repositories(they
>> are still there in the history) after migration to git.
>>
>> The idea is to have one git repository per eCos repository(or
>> project if you will).
>>
>> The first project I would like to switch to git, is nios2ecos.
>
> Why git in particular?

Because it's simply the best? ;-)

> We have started looking at switching to another RCS at eCosCentric as
> well.  In particular I looked at three distributed RCS solutions: git,
> bazaar and mercurial.  While there is no doubt that git is the most
> powerful of the three solutions and also fastest on linux, it is also
> the most complex of the three solutions with a very steep initial
> learning curve, it's support for windows is lacking, and its
> documentation is sparse and confusing.  As a tool for experienced Linux
> developers, sure, git is the best choice.  But for the average eCos
> developer,  I am not convinced.

Did you see this:

<http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/>

(I'm not Windows user, so didn't use it myself).

BTW, git has gitcvsserver:

<http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-cvsserver.html>

so those who are used to CVS and don't wish to learn new tool can
continue to use their favorite CVS clients.

-- Sergei.


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[ECOS] eCos VCS switch (was: Switching to using git on eCosForge)

[Daniel Néri]

Alex Schuilenburg <alexs@ecoscentric.com> writes:

> I cannot speak for these tools, other than to say I have tried to
> import our internal CVS repository and anoncvs into all three and not
> one of them worked. git did the worst job, followed by bazaar then
> mercurial. And yes, I have tried cvs2svn to go via svn as well :-(

I've been tracking the eCos anoncvs using Mercurial for more than 3
years. At first I was using Tailor for conversion, but I'm currently
using the bundled "convert" extension.

The main problem for me was always the somewhat strange "grafting" of
the 'net' sub-directory into 'packages' using CVS module magic. I worked
around that by converting 'net' and 'packages' into separate Mercurial
repositories which I then merge (i.e. "hg merge -f") to make my own
working repository.

A switch of the public CVS repository to Mercurial would be a major
improvement.


Best regards,
Daniel


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[ECOS] Re: Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Sergei Organov]

Alex Schuilenburg <alexs@ecoscentric.com> writes:

[...]

> Both bazaar and mercurial were a lot easier to learn and work with
> than git. git's Windows support is also limited and is mostly
> restricted to the 100's of cmd apps which make up git under cygwin.

Once again, I'm not a Windows user, but is this really true nowadays?

E.g., what about this one:

<http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/>

Isn't it good enough for Windows users?

-- Sergei.


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Re: [ECOS] Re: Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Sergei Gavrikov]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 05:05:20PM +0400, Sergei Organov wrote:
> Alex Schuilenburg <alexs@ecoscentric.com> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Both bazaar and mercurial were a lot easier to learn and work with
> > than git. git's Windows support is also limited and is mostly
> > restricted to the 100's of cmd apps which make up git under cygwin.
> 
> Once again, I'm not a Windows user, but is this really true nowadays?
> 
> E.g., what about this one:
> 
> <http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/>
> 
> Isn't it good enough for Windows users?
 
There are many tortoises there: Tortoise{SVN,Hg,Bzr,Git,...}

http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/Home
http://bazaar-vcs.org/TortoiseBzr

In any case they won't use PowerShell :-)

Sergei

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[ECOS] Re: Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Sergei Organov]

Sergei Gavrikov <sergei.gavrikov@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 05:05:20PM +0400, Sergei Organov wrote:
>> Alex Schuilenburg <alexs@ecoscentric.com> writes:
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>> > Both bazaar and mercurial were a lot easier to learn and work with
>> > than git. git's Windows support is also limited and is mostly
>> > restricted to the 100's of cmd apps which make up git under cygwin.
>> 
>> Once again, I'm not a Windows user, but is this really true nowadays?
>> 
>> E.g., what about this one:
>> 
>> <http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/>
>> 
>> Isn't it good enough for Windows users?
>  
> There are many tortoises there: Tortoise{SVN,Hg,Bzr,Git,...}

Yeah, that was my argument: all of them probably have roughly the same
functionality. Isn't it what Windows users actually use? If they do,
then git should be not worse than others in this area.

-- Sergei.


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Re: [ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Alex Schuilenburg]

[Apologies to Øyvind for the repost, my original email to ecos-discuss
was bounced]

 Øyvind Harboe wrote on 2009-09-17 13:56:
> [...]
>   
>> Why git in particular?
>>     
>
> No reason not to really.
>
> git is easy to use when cloning/downloading + web interfaces exist
> where you can download snapshots.
>   
Ditto for mercurial and bazaar.  The web interfaces were pretty much all
the same.  wry uses git internally as he uses linux and whenever he
raves about something, I find the equivalent in mercurial.  I use linux
mostly, but through a Windows desktop since I need to use real windows
(i.e. not hidden in a VM).


> + git is becoming more of a required skill for embedded development
> as Linux requires it, so I looked a bit at mercurial, but didn't really
> feel like learning more than one of these distributed systems.. it's
> been a while
> that anybody suggested or wanted anything but git as an alternative
> to svn in the circles I frequent. I'm sure git tools will improve with time.
> We're looking 5-10 years into the future here, right?
>   
The same could be said of any of the three :-)

>   
>> The choice of an alternative RCS should also take into consideration
>> Windows users, as well as speed and ease of use.
>>     
>
> Web interfaces on the server kinda take care of my greatest
> concern about those that do not want or need to learn git.
>
> They can wget + tar ...., no version control system at all involved.
>   
As above, all three provide similar interfaces, so no need with actually
using any of them.

However, for distributed development, not using proper DRSC tools,
whichever you choose, is foolhardy IMHO.


> Also there are nice git server sites for those that have some
> pet project they are working on and want to share, e.g.
> http://repo.or.cz/, which pretty much fills the role that
> www.ecosforge.net has had up to now
>
>
> The above said, I don't think I'll care if eCos CVS switches to
> git or mercurial. Mercurial is next on my list of distributed systems
> to look into and if I only did closed source development, probably
> the preferred solution.
>   
I dont think you can say mercurial (or hg for short) is better for
closed source.  All three mentioned are pretty much equal in concept and
basic functionality when it comes to open source development.  git is
certainly the most powerful, no disagreement there, but you can really
hang yourself a lot more easier, just as cvs admin allows you to, only
to discover the problem mistake years down the line ;-)   The other two
IMHO have a lot more structure to them making it harder to hang
yourself, or rather, making you think twice before trying :-)  Sure, if
you are an expert then nobody dies, but what are the chances of every
developer with write access being an expert with git?

-- Alex Schuilenburg

   >>>> Visit us at ESC-Boston  http://www.embedded.com/esc/boston <<<<
   >>>> Sep 22-23 on Stand 226  at Hynes Convention Center, Boston <<<<

          **** Visit us at ESC-UK  http://www.embedded.co.uk ****
          **** Oct 7-8 on Stand 433 at FIVE ISC, Farnborough ****



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Re: [ECOS] Switching to using git on eCosForge

[Ross Younger]

Alex Schuilenburg wrote:
> wry uses git internally as he uses linux and whenever he
> raves about something, I find the equivalent in mercurial.

Actually, I chose to use git internally (for several months now) on my
current main project because it was the only one of the three (git/bzr/hg)
that I had never used before. I've learned a lot and would now describe
myself as more proficient with git than the others.

FWIW, git tells me that I have 36 branch tags in my repo at the moment: some
traditional "feature" branches, some "main" subsystem branches which pull
from the feature branches, some to mirror the relevant parts of CVS, a
"master" branch for testing which I octopus my subsystem branches to - and
then the high-level bits of the whole thing over again so I can easily keep
an anoncvs-based copy. At first glance this many branches might seem to be
overkill, but I'm finding that it works well - and remember that branches
are very very cheap in this brave new DRCS-based world. The gitk graphical
viewer is worth its weight in gold.

As you say, I expect that I'll be able to do all of this just as well in hg
- I'll just need to put on some differently-tinted glasses :)


Ross

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