github? [Re: [Agda] Agda development]

[Ulf Norell]

The people in charge are me, Andreas and Nils Anders. I wouldn't say that
the reason we haven't moved is because we don't want to learn git--I'm
quite comfortable using git--but rather that there's some work involved
migrating everything to github and it hasn't been clear that it's worth the
effort. I don't think there would be any huge advantages for us as main
developers moving to github.

I'm not sure I believe that darcs is a major obstacle to getting
contributions. We have quite a few outside contributors (Nils Anders would
know the rough number). I'm more swayed by the argument from people that
want to maintain branches of Agda and struggle doing that with darcs.

We'll have a sit down this week to discuss whether it's time to take the
plunge.

/ Ulf


On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Jan Stolarek <jan.stolarek at p.lodz.pl> wrote:

> > Of course, if the main developer can learn another vc, so
> > could the contributors...
> True. But as I pointed out git becomes a standard, while darcs disappears.
> I feel that most
> potential contributors will just not care to learn darcs.
>
> > Also, people say that keeping forks and merging conflicts is easier with
> git than darcs.
> I haven't worked with darcs (other than some basics to pull out a repo),
> but indeed working with
> branches and merging is painless in git (once you learn what you're
> doing!). That said, pull
> requests and merging offered by github, while easy to use and convenient,
> should be IMO avoided.
> They create a lot of unnecessary empty merge commits that obscure repo's
> history.
>
> > But keep in mind that the biggest hurdle to contribution will not vanish
> > by a move to git:  The complexity of the Agda implementation itself...
> According to github GHC has 115 contributors. Idris, after just two years,
> has 51 contributors -
> half of them with less than 5 commits, which shows that people who aren't
> regular developers
> still can commit small fixes. I don't think Agda is much more complex than
> any of these two
> compilers (am I wrong here?) and could also get a lot of people
> contributing.
>
> That said, who is in charge here? :-) I mean who can make the decission to
> move from Darcs to
> github?
>
> Janek
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> Agda at lists.chalmers.se
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