Re: sourceware and git

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please@sourceware.org>]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 06:14:30PM +0000, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
>On Tue, 29 Jul 2014, Jeff Johnston wrote:
>
>> There have been some requests to put newlib into git.  I was wondering if
>> the overseers have recently looked into putting sourceware into git.  
>> 
>> I am also wondering how a piece of sourceware can be put into git 
>> without disrupting it.  What steps were needed to move binutils and gdb 
>> over?  Apparently, the gdb-cvs mailing list continues to work and I 
>> would like to have the same occur for our newlib-cvs list.  Any insight 
>> to the process would be appreciated including issues found.
>
>The basic rule for moving pieces of src CVS is that you move just a 
>logical project rather than a group of unrelated projects.  I.e., if you 
>want to move newlib to git, just move newlib (the directories and toplevel 
>files that are used in a newlib build) rather than the whole repository.  
>Then src CVS can be made readonly as I don't think any of the other 
>projects have any significant activity.

I've been trying to convince Jeff and Corinna that the top-level stuff
isn't really needed for newlib.

I already have cygwin available as a self-contained git module which
doesn't use the top-level configury but which can still be dropped into
the standard tree along with gdb, gcc, binutils, and newlib.  But, you
can also just check cygwin out via, e.g.,
git clone ssh:sourceware.org/cygwin.git /usr/src/cygwin
and start building from that source directory, as long as you point it
to a version of newlib.  I was thinking that newlib could do the same.

Since cygwin needs newlib, I think that this means that cygwin could
import newlib as a submodule if it needed it.  The other proposal is to
keep newlib and cygwin in one git project.  That more or less keeps the
status quo for newlib and cygwin but it means that people who use newlib
without cygwin will have extra Windows-specific code that they don't
care about.  And, I think it would be nice to use the power of git to
allow a logical separation between the two projects.