Re: OS-level virtualization

[Austin Kim <freennix%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Apr 11, 2021, at 2:51 AM, Thomas Mueller <mueller6725%twc.com@localhost> wrote:
> 
> What is this, NetBSD's SCM system switching from CVS to Git?
> 
> I thought NetBSD was setting up to switch from CVS to Mercurial.
> 
> I am still curious when this planned switch is intended to take place, or if they might ultimately decide in favor of git.

I was not aware that this had moved beyond just a work-in-progress stage; has Core committed to this?  Is there a timetable for this migration?

If not, FWIW one possible suggestion might be for Core to consider announcing holding a public vote later this year, say on July 1, among all NetBSD developers with CVS commit rights, between migrating NetBSD’s SCM system to Mercurial versus migrating to Git.  (That would give people time to do their own research into the relative merits and trade-offs between the two systems.)

A public commitment by Core to back whatever consensus emerges from the majority of NetBSD committers as a result of such a vote, along with a tentative goal of completing such a migration by, say, New Year's 2022 to whichever SCM system the developers ultimately vote for, would not only go a long way to overcoming the energy of activation of moving forward with that migration, but also potentially motivate a lot of developers to contribute, knowing their efforts have the Project’s formal backing.
> 
> FreeBSD switch from svn to git was a decidedly nontrivial matter, especially for the ports tree, ports being FreeBSD's counterpart to NetBSD's pkgsrc.
> 
> Tom
> 
Looking through FreeBSD’s mailing lists during the time of their CVS → SVN migration and more recently their SVN → Git migration, all the lively debates about choice of VCS are clearly nothing new (which makes it all the more remarkable that in they end they somehow made it happen).  If the FreeBSD Project could do it, not just once, but twice, I have no doubt that migrating to either Mercurial or Git could be made to work; which is why leaving it up to a vote and going with the majority consensus of NetBSD committers might be the best way to go.  In any case, both Git and Mercurial would be a vast improvement over the status quo IMHO, if for no other reason than for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of finally being able to clean up so many things that have accumulated over a quarter century.

Austin

“We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.”  —Allan Massie, _A Question of Loyalties_, 1989