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Re: After the first twelve years

From: Craig A. Berry <craigberry_at_mac.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:36:10 -0500

On Mar 19, 2010, at 4:28 PM, Yang Tse wrote:

> I strongly believe that GIT makes occasional contributors disappear.

I'm very glad to see you're concerned about occasional contributors,
but how the version control tool affects them is really more a matter
of policy than technology. If the project requires all patches to be
created with git-format-patch or via remote pull from the
contributor's repository on github or elsewhere, or if the
configuration and build tools assume git is available, then yes, you
block people from participating who for whatever reason don't have git
or don't know how to use it.

But if git-friendly submissions are preferred though not required,
there's no reduction in accessibility to anyone who isn't git-savvy.
git am will actually do a decent job with most e-mail containing
patches created with good old-fashioned GNU diff -pu. It's a bit less
forgiving (doesn't have fuzz, refuses to correct foreign line ending
differences, whines about trailing whitespace), but it usually works.
If it doesn't, there's always GNU patch followed by git commit --author.

It *is* important to make the source is available in some fashion that
doesn't require git. github provides snapshots, but the latest commit
ID is only available from the archive filename, not anywhere in the
contents of the snapshot. Creating dependencies on the commit ID in
the build toolchain is best avoided, though can be dealt with in
various ways.
________________________________________
Craig A. Berry
mailto:craigberry_at_mac.com

"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
  difficult than getting in."
                  Brad Leithauser

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Received on 2010-03-21