Re: pushing for a new hash, was Re: [PATCH 2/3] rebase: Add tests for console output

On Wed, Jun 7, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:

I don't think it is a language thing, but a matter of perspective.

True, but there is also

    * bw/object-id (2017-06-05) 33 commits
    ...

     Conversion from uchar[20] to struct object_id continues.

     Will merge to 'next'.

So are you trying to impose priorities on what Junio has to review? (It sounds like so, but maybe you are just stating an observation, and a conclusion with an actionable item comes next)

Sometimes I disagree with what Junio does and in which order, too. But he has more experience in how to guide a successful community, so I respect what he does even if I would have done it differently (such as a different order).

In the simplest form the message could be understood as a call for help to review the patches Brian sent.

And the fact that YOU are not reviewing the patches, tells me that you have more important things to do, such as running a fork of Git.

In my perception the conversion is picking up speed. It used to be Brian
who decided to start this years ago as a one-man show, but now we
have multiple people working on it
* Brian sending out more patches, as more review happens:
https://public-inbox.org/git/5973919a-e282-a02e-9b04-d313c77e250d@google.com/
https://public-inbox.org/git/20170509221322.GA106700@google.com/
* Brandon picking up one part of the conversion series (mentioned before, see
current cooking email)
* A potential migration plan has been made
  "Git hash function transition" (https://goo.gl/gh2Mzc).
  See the note atop the document "Note: this draft is somewhat out
  of date and is being reworked (in particular to use a different hash
function).
  See public-inbox.org/git for more current discussion."
* There are not a lot of patches, which do not have written
  "SHA1 CONVERISON" all over their face. (This one has, I made it last night
  as a one off response to this thread:
https://public-inbox.org/git/20170607021805.11849-1-sbeller@google.com/)

That message sent there would be "Junio thinks the SHA1 conversion is the most important thing now, so he does the work (the work a maintainer does to guide the project)".

You could send the same message "Johannes thinks the SHA1 conversion is the most important thing and do the work (Johannes being a well respected contributor would send patches, and that would attract a lot of reviews for sure. -- I don't mean this snarky, please don't read any snark in this.)

Yes I have seen a couple of these messages (unrelated topics). "Git should do X. Git should not do Y. k, thx bye!" and I ignored them, because these one-offs do not convince me to invest my own time in it to produce a reasonable ROI.

If there are patches attached, it is not ludicrous any more as the "proof of work done" shows that the voice raised is more than just hot talk, but actual a genuine interest in moving things towards the right direction.

Another big one: "Move Git away from global state all over the place". If you think about all subsystems, it may even reach the order of magnitude to the sha1 conversion, but the way the message was sent it did not seem ludicrous to me: https://public-inbox.org/git/20170530171217.GB2798@google.com/

Or the other big project "Protocol v2, that scales and serves large repos well (number of refs, large binary files omitted, refs in wants and so on)" took a different approach, and mostly discussed design (I recall emails both from Microsoft as well as Google discussing the design, most of them having RFC patches attached, such that it very much looked like "proof of work done, so it is not ludicrous")

If you were to actually follow through after such an announcement, and in fact review the sha1 conversion patches thoroughly and in a timely manner, I would think such a call up front would be well received.

I thought about doing that myself, but I dread my future commitment. Specifically as my $DAY_JOBs wants me to work on submodules instead of the sha1 conversion. ("Submodules are more important than the SHA1 conversion [for me] ", if I were to trust the infinite wisdom of our management process. )

Coordinate is a strong word here. Most recent observed examples: https://public-inbox.org/git/xmqq60gpfvqj.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com/ (My patch series conflicted with Ævars series, so we had to figure out how to fix it)

https://public-inbox.org/git/20170602182215.GA57260@google.com/ (Aforementioned object id conversion series having merge conflicts)

Note that this is only about coordination "You should talk to person Y so we can figure out how to make these 2 patches work well together, not about distributing tasks, as in "You must do X".

As remarked in an earlier email, if such a thing is called out, I would very much prefer it in the next quarter, as then I can convince my manager to have more time following such a goal. Otherwise *I* would ignore it. The community at large may be different and jump on it like crazy.

So you want a project roadmap?

As hinted at before the best would be to lead a good example here and show *your* roadmap such that others see how valuable of a tool it is to have a roadmap in the open.

BLAKE is what we're currently leaning on. (we=authors of "Git hash function transition"; Leaning in the sense: If nobody ever speaks up until all work is done, we'd just go with that. As soon as someone comes up with any reasonable argument either publicly or privately on why other hashes are better, we're easily persuaded to go with that)

Same for me, if I misunderstood you please point out.

tl;dr: Discussions are nice, but someone has to do the actual work, too.

Thanks, Stefan