Re: [PATCH] remote-helpers: point at their upstream repositories

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 18, 2014, 23:05 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq7g5i4r48.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <537693aee4fdd_3e4812032fcc@nysa.notmuch>

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

>> > But that being said, this is Felipe's code. While we have a legal right
>> > to distribute it in v2.0, if he would really prefer it out for v2.0, I
>> > would respect that.
>> 
>> I am fine with that.
>
> Are you? Because in two of the three options you list below you wouldn't
> be doing that.

"that" does not refer to "remove them at v2.0 (unconditional)". It refers to "If Felipe really wants for the removal for v2.0, I would respect that". And I saw you said you did not want to disrupt v2.0.

If the options I listed all meant removal at v2.0, then I would understand your complaints, but that is not the case, so I am not sure what to make of that.

> The fact of the matter is that users cannot depend on packages any more.
> Maybe they'll be packaged, maybe not. If they are it will take a long
> time before they do. In the meantime they'll have to manually install
> them all all out-of-tree tools.

I have always thought that distro packagers are the biggest ally us project leaders have. They locate useful pieces of software, massage them into a shape that fit their distro well and deliver what we write to their audience. Packaging stuff that are useful to their end-users is what they do best, and not leaving useful stuff unpackaged is in their best interest.

Your statement makes it sound like they are incompetent lazy fools who do not know what is useful for their users.

I find it disturbing to see such a distrust. Or am I being too naive to have too much faith in packaging folks?

I checked the list of packages that depend on "git" on one of my boxes (it is a bit old Ubuntu). I of course expected that many of them are what comes from our tree split into their own "niche tool" packages (e.g. git-svn, git-gui, gitweb...), but I was pleasantly surprised to see many that I haven't even aware of being packaged. Of course, "tig" is among the packages that depend on us which I am happy to see.

There are things of somewhat questionable value I saw in the list, of course. It is already 2014, and I feel fairly safe to feel that I can say without offending too many people that I doubt "git-arch" would be on such a list of packages distros offer to their users, if it were written as a third-party plug-in today.

It is an (odd) example of a package that is still there mostly by inertia at this point, and that inertia comes from many things. It is in our tree outside contrib/, it was found useful once in the past and was packaged, the packager already has infrastructure to cut a separate package out of our tree, and it is more trouble to retire it and risk breaking minority users than just keep shipping it.

But hg is not in a situation similar to tla, is it? I simply cannot imagine "there is no history worthwhile to salvage out of Mercurial repositories" coming anytime in the near future.

After looking at the reverse-depends list of packages, my faith is strengthened in that the Git ecosystem is truly maturing and useful third-party plug-ins will be picked up by distro packagers.

Am I delusional?