[Biopython-dev] Moving from CVS to git

[Peter]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Bartek
Wilczynski<bartek at rezolwenta.eu.org> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I absolutely agree here with Peter, i.e. I would suggest we move now from
> CVS to a git branch hosted on github.
>
> Since I'm more involved in the technical setup we currently have, I'd also add
> a few more technical arguments for this move:
>
> - While current setup is working, it is suboptimal because there is an extra
>  conversion step both for accepting changes done by people in git (git to CVS)
>  and propagating releases (CVS to github).

Yeah - this works but for anything non-trivial it would be a pain.

> - Once we move to git as our version control system, we need to have a
> "master" branch  which will be easily available for viewing and branching:
> we can't do it now on open-bio servers (it requires git installation and
> some server-side scripts to have a browseable repository), ...

My impression from talking to OBF guys is if we really want to we
can do this, but it require us (Biopython) to take care of installing
and running git on an OBF machine.

> ... also "moving" to github is easier because it actually
> requires no physical action,  we just need to stop updating CVS.

Yes - this is the big plus of "option (a)" over "option (b)" in my
earlier email.

> - If anyone have fears of depending on github, I think it's much less
> of a problem than with CVS,  moving our "master" branch from
> github to somewhere else is very easy and does not require any
> action on the side of github, we just post the branch somewhere,
> and start pushing there (you can find a list of possible hosting
> solutions here: http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitHosting)

Yes, it is good to know we won't be tied to github (unless we start
using more of the tools they offer on top of git itself).

> - Regarding the backups of the github branch: I'm already doing this.
> If you have a shell account on dev.open-bio.org, you can get the
> current  git branch of biopython from /home/bartek/git_branch
> (location subject to change), so this would require no additional
> work,

Yes - that is what I was hinting at in my email (trying to be brief).

> ... although it would be optimal, to actually install git on open-bio
> server, so that the updating script can be run from there.

Yes. Even something as simple as a cron job running on an
OBF server would satisfy me from a back up point of view.

> If we had that, we could actually hook it up directly to github,
> so that instead of running once in an hour, it would be run
> after each push to the branch (http://github.com/guides/post-receive-hooks)

More complex, but worth considering.

> To summarize, I'm ready to switch off the part of my script which is
> updating the gihub branch from CVS.

Good. We'll also want to ask the OBF admins to make CVS
read only once we move.

> For now, I would leave the part that is making backups of github
> branch on open-bio server (via rsync).

That would be my plan for the short term. We can then talk
to the OBF server admins about how we can do this better.

> Once we have git installed on dev.open-bio, I can hook it
> up to notifications from github.

If we go to the trouble of installing git on the OBF servers ;)

Peter