From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 22847 invoked by alias); 25 Dec 2019 18:50:19 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 22836 invoked by uid 89); 25 Dec 2019 18:50:18 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SPF_HELO_PASS,SPF_PASS autolearn=ham version=3.3.1 spammy=chronic X-HELO: snark.thyrsus.com Received: from thyrsus.com (HELO snark.thyrsus.com) (71.162.243.5) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with ESMTP; Wed, 25 Dec 2019 18:50:16 +0000 Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 7723C4704CAB; Wed, 25 Dec 2019 13:50:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 18:50:00 -0000 From: "Eric S. Raymond" To: Segher Boessenkool Cc: Alexandre Oliva , Jeff Law , Joseph Myers , Mark Wielaard , Maxim Kuvyrkov , "Richard Earnshaw (lists)" , gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: Proposal for the transition timetable for the move to GIT Message-ID: <20191225185014.GA19267@thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com References: <20191216133632.GC3152@gate.crashing.org> <20191216135451.GA3142@thyrsus.com> <20191216140514.GD3152@gate.crashing.org> <20191216153649.GE3152@gate.crashing.org> <20191225120747.GA96669@thyrsus.com> <20191225122449.GL4505@gate.crashing.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20191225122449.GL4505@gate.crashing.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13) X-IsSubscribed: yes X-SW-Source: 2019-12/txt/msg00413.txt.bz2 Segher Boessenkool : > Or doing what everyone else does: put an empty .gitignore file in > otherwise empty directories. That is an ugly kludge that I will have no part of whatsoever. Conversion artifacts like this are sources of cognitive friction and confusion that take developers' attention away from the substantive part of their work. Each individual one may be minor, but the cumulative effect can be a chronic distraction that us not less because developers are unware or ibly half-aware of it. Thus, the goal of a repository converter should be to bridge smoothly between the native idioms of the source and target systems, *minimizing* conversion artifacts. The ideal should be to produce a converted history that looks as much as possible like it has always been under the target system. Developers should have no need to know or care that the history used to be managed differently unless they need to do sonething that *unavoidably* crosses that boundary, like looking uo a legacy ID grom an old bug report. Reposurgeon was designed for this goal from the beginning. -- Eric S. Raymond