[IPython-dev] Moving to git/github

[Fernando Perez]

Hi all,

over the last couple of weeks, pretty much every time I've tried to do
something recently with ipython I've wasted the first two hours
dealing with bzr repository problems (corrupted repos, version
incompatibilities, ...).  Once bzr decided to corrupt my repo (I'd
never seen that from any other VC system!), I had to re-clone all the
branches, but I just realized that I need to do it with the old format
so I can push.  And the old format is slow as molasses.  We could
upgrade the lp repos, but frankly, rather than invest more time
dealing with a broken tool, let's just move to one that works.

I've tested converting our bzr repo into git and it works beautifully
(this will NOT be our official git repo, I was just testing things
out):

http://github.com/fperez/ip

see for example:

http://github.com/fperez/ip/network

where you can scroll and view all the merges and history.

If we get GSOC project(s) approved, having a smooth collaboration
machinery will be even more important.

So a proposed plan for the migration is:

- merge all the branches that are in-flight and ready into trunk (it's
not a lot right now).
- I repeat the conversion, and upload the new repo to github, we close
up shop on bzr.

Ideally, that would be it for the code.  So I'd like to ask anyone
with pending work to put up your branches for merging, so that we can
review them and merge them as soon as is reasonable.  If we have
unmerged branches when we make the transition they can be moved
separately, but the extra steps needed the better.

I'm deliberately *not* addressing here the question of what to do with
bugs, we have a ton of important history in the LP bugtracker so I'm
not sold on the idea of switching yet to the github one, at least
until we discuss it more carefully.

Any thoughts, feedback, holes in the above plan?

Cheers,

f

ps - anyone know what the format of our lp:ipython repo is?  I can't
seem to clone it in a way that allows me to push later again using a
shared repo because I don't know what format to use for init-repo.
Any help with that info would be much appreciated.