Sunday, May 26, 2013

#WMhack - About #Gerrit, #GIT and #SVN

When there is still so much noise about GIT and GERRIT more than a year after the transition from SVN, you can wonder if the move from SVN was the right one to make.

At the Amsterdam hackathon there was expert help available for everyone who wanted/needed to learn more about using GIT and Gerrit and as I was curious to the answer, I asked the question.

The most important reason to move was because of Git. Using Git many new functionalities became available that made the MediaWiki developers more productive. Gerrit is something of a pain but it is usable and it is improving. So much so that the conversation of dropping Gerrit has subsided.

When you wonder about the question "was it worth it", you also have to consider the TCO or, the total cost of ownership. I came up with the question if the increased productivity had to be offset with the cost of one person supporting Gerrit. I learned that SVN also required a lot of tweaking. The CodeReview extension was written by the Wikimedia  staff.


A hackathon isn't a hackathon if it is not for showing off things that are in the works.. GitBlit is as I understand it one tool that is intended to make things easy.. More about GitBlit here.
Thanks,
      GerardM

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