[petsc-dev] All petsc-dev users will need to do a reclone of petsc-dev on Tuesday or later

[Karl Rupp]

Hi Richard,

it will still be possible to pull from a Mercurial repository, which is 
in sync with the HEAD of the stable master-branch in git. We will also 
continue to accept pull requests via Mercurial, so no apocalypse :-)

Best regards,
Karli



On 03/11/2013 10:08 PM, Richard Tran Mills wrote:
> 1) Jed, what did you do to Barry? =)
> 2) I am am going to interpret the move from Mercurial to Git as a sign
> that the End Times are indeed here.
>
> OK, seriously, I am OK with using Git or Mercurial: I think they are
> actually fairly similar tools and each has pluses and minuses.  But what
> I do want to advocate for is that we please try to to keep some sort of
> Mercurial access to petsc-dev in place, either by keeping a Mercurial
> repo around or by maintaining some clear instructions on how this can be
> done using something like the Hg-Git plugin.  My concern is that, while
> I am a Ph.D. computer scientist, most of the people I write code with
> are not (they are domain scientists), and the Git learning curve is
> *steep*.  I have a hard enough time getting some of them comfortable
> with using Mercurial, and I see trying to do the same with Git as a
> potentially hopeless task.
>
> --Richard
>
> On 3/11/13 2:05 PM, Barry Smith wrote:
>>     To users of petsc-dev,
>>
>>        I promised more details on the planned change and why we are
>> making them.
>>
>>        The plan is to move petsc-dev over to the git repository system
>> (remaining on bitbucket.org so no new accounts are needed) with a
>> simple and slow transition from Mecurial and allowing people to change
>> their workflows slowly and easily and NOT to drop a totally new system
>> onto everyone at the same time. Thus on Tuesday we will be moving all
>> the data over to git and providing access from bitbucket.org with BOTH
>> hg and git, you will not need to switch over to git on Tuesday and in
>> fact we recommend not switching to git immediately but continuing to
>> use hg (on the new repository) until we have the git process
>> documented and can help people with it. On Tuesday we will be sending
>> out the URL of the new hg repository you should clone from at that time.
>>
>>     If you are in the middle of a coding project that you don't want
>> to push immediately send us petsc-maint at mcs.anl.gov and we'll get
>> things organized so that you can continue with that in the new
>> repository.
>>
>>     Schedule:
>>        Tuesday -- delete your current petsc-dev repositories and
>> reclone with hg using the new URL, use this new repository just like
>> the current one
>>        After Tuesday -- read our documentation on using Git (to be
>> sent out later)  and then eventually switch to accessing petsc-dev via
>> git.
>>        Eventually -- the Mecurial (hg) access to petsc-dev will become
>> read only.
>>
>>     Reasons for the change:
>>
>> 1)  We want to provide a more stable version of petsc-dev. To often
>> petsc-dev won't compile cleanly when pulled. In our new model this
>> will happen much less often since code will be well tested before
>> being pushed into the stable version.
>>
>> 2) The petsc-dev repository has gotten overly large due to many large
>> binary files being accidentally added to the repository, thus it is
>> time to get rid of those files and that requires a reclone.
>>
>> 3) We would like to make the change sets and histories in petsc-dev be
>> more logically related to particular projects and not just a random
>> bunch of unrelated changes (as Barry has often done). Our new work
>> flow with git will help with this.
>>
>>   4) Though Mecurial is a user friendly system, git appears to have
>> more community support and thus is likely to have more capabilities
>> and utilities developed for it in the future. We will strive to make
>> the use of git with PETSc as simple as possible.
>>
>>     I have been hesitant to make this change for fear that working
>> with petsc-dev would become more cumbersome, more annoying, more
>> bookkeeping involved, more like a job, and hence less fun. And we know
>> people tend to do something less if it is less fun. Since we don't
>> want people to do things with petsc-dev less we will be trying hard to
>> make the new model as close to the old model as possible and not
>> cumbersome or annoying.  As always we appreciate any feedback on what
>> we are doing wrong and how we could improve it.
>>
>>     Barry
>>
>>
>> On Mar 10, 2013, at 10:29 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
>>
>>>     To everyone accessing petsc-dev via Mecurial (hg),
>>>
>>>       We are reorganizing how we handle the petsc-dev/BuildSystem
>>> repository. In step one everyone will need to delete all their clones
>>> of petsc-dev and then reclone them either on Tuesday or soon after.
>>> So it would be good if anyone who has material close to being ready
>>> to push to petsc-dev to finish it up and push it before then.** (If
>>> you are a user of petsc-dev but do not edit any files in petsc-dev
>>> you will also need to do the reclone.)
>>>
>>>     We will send out more warnings reminding you of the change and
>>> the location of the new URL to clone from. We will also send out a
>>> more complete message explaining all the planned changes and why we
>>> are making them. Aside from this first recloning, the changes will
>>> not require any immediate change in the way you interact with petsc-dev.
>>>
>>>
>>>    Barry
>>>
>>> ** If you miss the deadline, but have changes that still need to be
>>> submitted, we can handle that but it will be  manual process so we do
>>> not want too much of that.
>>>
>
>