[vtk-developers] VTK moving to Git

[David Doria]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Jeff Baumes <jeff.baumes at kitware.com> wrote:
> There are some somewhat large events coming up in the coming weeks for
> VTK. The first is that we will be branching for a release (5.6) soon.
> Also, about a week after the release is branched we will be moving
> from a CVS repository to Git. There are several reasons for this,
> including speed and stability. But the big win is collaboration and
> workflow. With Git, anyone can develop and commit to their own local
> branches, even people without write access to the central repository.
> Developers may then submit merge requests that allow us to directly
> apply your commits. Even those with write access already will gain the
> ability to do local commits early and often, and simultaneously manage
> many local topic branches.
>
> To get started learning about Git, you can take a look at these pages,
> or any number of additional tutorials online.
>
> Git Community Book
> http://book.git-scm.com/
>
> Pro Git
> http://progit.org/book/
>
> Stay tuned for more information about the upcoming release and Git migration.
>
> Jeff Baumes

It seems to me for the git structure to work effectively a more formal
hierarchy must be setup. In the google tech talk Linus gave on git, he
described how he had 5 people whom he trusted that he would pretty
much blindly merge from. Each of those 5 people had a handful, and it
trickled down. If this tree structure isn't "officialized", we will
have the same problem that we had before - the people who didn't have
cvs write access will write code in their repository and it will never
be looked at / merged.

Just my $.02.

David