Re: [PATCH v2 4/6] config: don't implicitly use gitdir

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 13, 2017, 22:05 UTC
Message-ID: <20170613220532.GO133952@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAPc5daWpXnkNyuGNtFi4YTyB+Np5Yw8yZCGwu5VNzv+WON1u2Q@mail.gmail.com>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 2:51 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>> What is the next step, then?  You can find the notion ridiculous but
>> it's how this project has worked in my experience (and how other
>> projects with similar patch-based workflows work).
>
> Does "patch-based" have much to do with this? I agree that distributed
> nature of the development would bring this issue, but I tend to think that
> using merge/pull based workflow would not alleviate it--am I mistaken?

Thanks, you're right.  Distributed is the relevant feature.

The same issue can even come up when using a centralized version control system like Subversion or Perforce --- without attention to API compatibility, someone's change that was thoroughly reviewed and well tested locally in a developer's working directory can introduce subtle breakage once they run "svn commit", causing it to merge with the latest upstream changes. The problem becomes more likely the more distributed a project is since each developer becomes less aware of the other changes that their modifications need to be compatible with.

Jonathan