Re: [PATCH 3/3] Teach "git branch" about --new-workdir

From: Christian MICHON <christian.michon@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 26, 2007, 11:51 UTC
Message-ID: <46d6db660707260451l7dd6b54o3b4d434e0468cf55@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0707251327390.3607@woody.linux-foundation.org>

On 7/25/07, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Now, admittedly, I think one issue with Windows is that the "hump" is
> simply much bigger. The initial cost (not necessarily in money, but in
> effort) of getting involved in a development process is just a *lot*
> higher for Windows users than it is for just about any UNIX.
>
> If you're on some unix platform, the cost of getting involved is basically
> that the project should already work to some degree, and then there may be
> some relatively *trivial* issues with making sure that you've got a
> compiler installed and the basic libraries. But that's really quite easy
> on just about any UNIX, to the point that most people don't even have to
> think about it.

http://www.openlina.org could closing this gap, as a temp fix.

It's supposed to help running linux native binaries on windows through some virtualization layer. Speed is supposed to be good, the host filesystem is supposed to be accessible. Many suppositions, I haven't evaluated this beast yet.

If this is truly usable, it would mean an easy migration for unix users, using the command line.

For true windows users, git-gui, gitk and ultimately a windows explorer plugin/addon will be needed still, as mentionned earlier in this thread.

It is to be noted though that C conversion and shell replacement will not be all that is needed.

Today, I've a colinux environment containing git-1.5.2.3 and all needed tools for development (shell, compiler, editor). When I perform some git operations in any linux controlled filesystem (ramfs, ext2 over cobd), no problem, git works as advertised.

When I used shared windows folder in the ntfs filesystem, there are issues. Fsync fails when writing files (could be colinux related), but git-init produces different .git/config file and git-commit does not work (fatal: index file smaller than expected). The last 2 problems should be windows related I believe and should hit as soon as the shell over C portage will be done.

Unless the current patches in mingw.git can fix these of course.

-- 
Christian
--
http://detaolb.sourceforge.net/, a linux distribution for Qemu