Dnia 2013-09-27, o godz. 09:10:04
Lars Huttar
On 9/26/2013 9:10 PM, Aditya Mahajan wrote:
Github seems to be the most popular DVCS hosting site at the moment. For manuals, I think that Github is particularly useful because you can click on edit and make the change. Github automatically creates a fork, a new branch, and pull request for you. So the technical barrier to participation is low.
I would question the perception that the technical barrier to participation on Github is low. Not long ago I tried to submit a patch to a project on Github, improving documentation and adding features. It took several hours (distributed over a couple of weeks) to learn how to do all that was required. It was *not* automatic. It strongly discouraged me from making more contributions to that project.
Maybe some major things have changed on Github since then. In any case, I have no doubt that once you know the system, and have the infrastructure set up, it's easy to participate. And I'm not saying that SVN makes it easy for non-SVN users to participate. All I'm saying is that for non-Git users, the technical barrier to participation was substantial, last time I tried it.
Again, I'm not arguing against a move to Git. I would just like to contribute my recent experience toward a well-informed decision process.
Just my 3 cents. I am not a heavy Git user (though I am quite accustomed to Mercurial instead), and I agree that the entry point for Git is not very low. However, it seems that nowadays, for a *new* user, learning to use SVN is pointless (unless he joins a project where SVN is used etc.): distributed VCSs seem to be just much better (and I heard that SVN has its own problems, too). So I would perceive this question as touching a demography issue: younger people are more likely to know/use Git (and not know SVN), older folk might know/use SVN. Also, if this matters, Git has an excellent Emacs front-end, Magit. I don't know whether SVN has something similar.
Lars
Best, -- Marcin Borkowski http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski Adam Mickiewicz University