[Twisted-Python] git repo maintenance

Lucas Taylor ltaylor.volks at gmail.com
Mon Oct 22 14:09:43 MDT 2012


On Oct 21, 2012, at 11:05 PM, Glyph wrote:

>> 
>> The few times I've tried to contributed to Twisted, svn was actually a big barrier. Trying to update my patches so that I'm sure the tests pass on trunk produced mysterious merge conflicts in files I've never touched. Maybe I'm bad at svn, but it's never worked well for me.
> 
> Why aren't you just using git for local development then?  You don't have commit access, so you should never need to touch an svn client other than git if you don't feel like it.
> 
> This is not entirely a rhetorical question.  We have always tried to be accommodating to DVCS users, providing instructions and repeated requests for both a plain git and/or a github ambassador to keep svn nicely synchronized and reduce the friction required for users of those tools to make contributions.  If the documentation we've offered on <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/GitMirror> is in any way incorrect or non-optimal, please don't hesitate to say exactly what would be better.  If you need wiki edit permission to update the page, I'll gladly give it to you.
> 
> -glyph


I think there are a few issues with the documentation, from the standpoint of an infrequent contributor:

    • It appears that you have to go "all in" with svn if you want to contribute, when that isn't actually the case

    • <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/GitMirror> is not terribly easy to find.
 	• It does come up in search, but is otherwise not easily accessible when you're spelunking for info on how to contribute
	• The page with the links has it as a parenthetical aside <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TwistedDevelopment>

    • Casual contributors should have a different story than core committers, but the distinction isn't always prominent
		• <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/GitMirror> makes this distinction, which is good
		• <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/BazaarMirror> does not.


For what it's worth, I've been using Mercurial patch queues to manage a couple of infrequent, small contributions. It works pretty well and doesn't rely on svn history or an svn bridge. That's not terribly interesting, but the point is that there are probably other workflows that are effective and it would be useful if they could be documented and shared easily.

I created a ticket to address some of these points and carry on the docs discussion elsewhere. If it seems like a good idea I'll work on updating the wiki.
http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/6154


Lucas Taylor






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