git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: Android needs repo, Chrome needs gclient. Neither work. What does that say about git?

From
tytso@mit.edu <tytso@mit.edu>
Date
Nov 23, 2009, 13:58 UTC
Message-ID
<20091123135817.GB2532@thunk.org>
In-Reply-To
<65e170e70911222011l776a6aean7bd75f072a806616@mail.gmail.com>
On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 12:11:29PM +0800, Adrian May wrote:
Show 6 quoted lines
> As for gclient and repo, without pretending to be an expert on what
> they actually do, I'm getting a strong gut feeling that if what I'm
> trying to do is pull or push code, then that's about as close as you
> can get to a definition of source control's central purpose. In the
> days of cvs or svn, I'd expect to use the source control for that. How
> come git needs help?
Show 5 quoted lines
> > these "bolt-on scripts" give the savvy user freedom
> 
> Actually, I think their purpose is precisely the opposite: to regiment
> the ordinary developer into following their process. So having that
> code under the developer's control is a weakness.

If you don't have bolt-on scripts, and you move that into the the core SCM, then you force *all* projects to use whatever workflow was decided as being the One True Way of doing things as seen by the SCM designer. So the question is whether the SCM *should* regiment all projects into following the SCM's designers idea of the One True Workflow.

Git's approach is to say that it will be fairly flexible about dictating workflow --- who pushs to whom; whether there is a single "star" repository topology, or something that is more flexible, etc.

You seem to hate this flexibility, because it makes life harder until you set up these bolt-on scripts. But that's what many of us like about git; that it doesn't force us (the project lead) into a single way of doing things.

As far as my wanting to impose a particular regimen on my project's developers, I've never been a big fan of the Bondage and Discpline school of software engineering. They can use whatever workflow they like; they just have to deliver patches that are clean. If they are, I'll pull from their repository. If they aren't, I won't.

     	       	     		     	  	    - Ted
Previous: Adrian MayNext: Adrian May
Message 4 of 10 in “Android needs repo, Chrome needs gclient. Neither work. What does that say about git?”
  1. Adrian MayNov 20, 2009
  2. Johannes SchindelinNov 20, 2009
  3. Adrian MayNov 23, 2009
  4. tytso@mit.eduNov 23, 2009
  5. Adrian MayNov 24, 2009
  6. Bob HazardNov 24, 2009
  7. Daniel BarkalowNov 24, 2009
  8. Petr BaudisNov 20, 2009
  9. Jakub NarebskiNov 20, 2009
  10. Clemens BuchacherNov 20, 2009

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.