[vtk-developers] CVS->Git Transition Plan

[Brad King]

Hi Folks,

In the coming weeks we will transition both VTK and ParaView to Git.
We have already published *experimental* repositories (these links
redirect web browsers to a gitweb interface):

  http://vtk.org/vtk-tmp.git
  http://paraview.org/paraview-tmp.git

These may or may *not* represent the final histories and may be
rewritten at any time.  Please do not develop real changes on these
histories or publish them elsewhere.  We'd like to avoid having more
incompatible histories out there.  Additional details are available on
these Wiki pages (under development):

  http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Git
  http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView/Git

We encourage everyone to clone the above repositories and try to
build.  Feel free to push changes back (to test if your SSH key
is installed correctly), but keep in mind these changes will be
thrown away.


Our preliminary plan/timeline for the permanent transition is:

April  9th
  - Make release binaries of VTK and ParaView available.

April 16th
  - Have Kitware-maintained VTK and ParaView dashboard clients
    transitioned to use new "vtk_common" and "paraview_common"
    helper scripts that provide a single point of change for
    switching from CVS to Git.

April 19th
  - Lock VTK and ParaView CVS repositories, push final changes
    to Git, switch all dashboards over to Git.  There will be
    a final commit to CVS after this that adds a message() to
    report that the CVS repository is no longer maintained.

Throughout the dashboard and repository transition, and even a few
days past April 19th, things may be chaotic while we address unforeseen
issues.  After the initial activation of the Git repository as the
official center of development we may restrict push access temporarily
while things stabilize just as if we were preparing a release.


In the mean time, if you have CVS commit access to VTK and/or ParaView
and wish to have "push" privileges for the Git repository, please
provide a public ssh key for authentication.  See here for details:

  http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Git#Publishing


The CVS->Git tracking repositories we have been publishing on GitHub
and Gitorious will be removed.  We will replace them with copies of
the new official histories.  However, we may wait for a while before
replacing them to avoid confusion of the two forms of history.

-Brad