[Mailman-Developers] Moving to Bazaar and Launchpad

[Barry Warsaw]

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Hi folks,

Several weeks ago I asked whether it was time to move the Mailman  
source code from Subversion to a distribute version control system  
(dvcs).  I appreciate all the great feedback that people provided,  
both on the public list and in private email.

It's clear that moving to a dvcs has widespread support, and that  
people are willing to learn a new version control system in order to  
gain the benefits of a dvcs.  Several people suggested that we look  
at Mercurial and git, as well as some other dvcs's.  At the time I  
narrowed the choices to Mercurial and Bazaar because I wanted to  
stick with a Python-based version control system.

Well, I've spent some time playing with both systems, talking to  
folks, and thinking about the move.  Either dvcs would probably serve  
our needs and either would give us advantages over Subversion.   
However, I have chosen Bazaar, with hosting on Launchpad.  In  
summary, the advanced branch hosting support offered by Launchpad,  
combined with the ability to get first hand help for any future  
problems or wishlists, swayed me to Bazaar.  I didn't find anything  
compelling enough about Mercurial to make a difference, although I'm  
sure it's a fine dvcs.

So, I am going to begin the process of moving our Subversion  
repository to Bazaar-on-Launchpad.  My target date for pulling the  
switch is Friday June 22nd, 2007.

In preparation, I've merged my exp-elixir-branch to the trunk.  I've  
had enough success with this to feel confident that the SQLAlchemy/ 
Elixir approach is going to work pretty well, and I want to reduce  
the number of branches we have to import into Launchpad.  The  
Subversion repository will remain available on SourceForge, but after  
flag day, it will be read only.

I've written a wiki page about the switch, available here:

http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/MailmanOnLaunchpad

and there are still a few things to work out, but I think we're quite  
close.  Please read that wiki page and let me know if you have any  
questions.

In the meantime, if you currently have write access to the Mailman  
Subversion repository, please register on Launchpad, request  
membership in the mailman-coders team, and send me a private email  
with your Launchpad user id.  I'll go through and start approving  
committers so we'll have everything in place when it's time to  
finalize the switch.

Cheers,
- -Barry

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