[Chicago] DVCS Workflows?

[Carl Karsten]

James Snyder wrote:
> I was thinking a bit about the revision control workflows discussion
> that had come up during the last meeting, and while a survey of some
> sort is probably a good idea, I have some related thoughts, and a
> question or two.
> 
> Central repository tools like SVN seem to be somewhat common in working
> environments where there's an organization or company backing/organizing
> development.  Are there any out there that are using distributed version
> control tools like git while working on projects like this, with a DVCS
> being the primary tool both locally and for the "official" version of
> the code?

I do a bit of hacking on the v4l code, which uses mercurial.  I personally don't
do anything much different than if they used svn: I pull down the source, hack,
hg patch>foo.patch, and email that to a mail list.

> 
> I pretty much exclusively use git, but frequently I'm using it as a way
> to talk to a centralized SVN repo (whether read-only to check out latest
> development sources or read-write).  In these cases, I'm basically using
> git because it allows me to have a local, rather well compressed, full
> history of a project.  I sometimes end up using it for easy local
> branching of things in a way I might not do with a local SVN client, but
> otherwise I don't use it that much differently for subversion while
> interacting with these types of projects.
> 
> Where git usage differs, for me, from svn usage is on projects I've
> started myself, or if someone's using git for an "official" version of a
> project.  I really like the ability to really cheaply create a
> repository when I start working on something, and periodically commit
> locally to it so that if something breaks horribly I've always got the
> history, and I've got it locally, and I don't have to be online to talk
> with a server.  This has gotten to the point where I will make a repo
> for almost any code I'm messing with as long as I may come back to it at
> some point.  I would never do this with subversion, even though
> technically I could make a local repo and commit to it.

I like the idea of using git for everything.

Right now I have an svn server, and most things end up there.  sometimes I
shoehorn stuff into an existing repo because it is related enough, and I don't
feel like creating another.  If I was using git, I am guessing there wouldn't be
any shoehorning.

> 
> Is anyone doing anything more interesting with DVCS tools?
> 
> Related:  There is a python git library available here (port of ruby
> grit library): http://blog.michaeltrier.com/2008/5/8/gitpython

v4l has some docs defining their workflow:

http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb/raw-file/tip/README.patches
"This file describes the general procedures used by the LinuxTV team (*)
and by the v4l-dvb community."

A few weeks ago python-dev list started discussing moving to a DVCS.

there is a crap load of posts/threads - I don't recommend reading the history.
here is the current result document:
"started the DVCS PEP..." http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg7fctr4_40dvjkdg64