phpBB moves source code versioning from Subversion to Git

[Erik Frèrejean]

Hello,

The phpBB development team would like to inform our users of a major change concerning the development infrastructure of phpBB. As you may well know phpBB has used Subversion for version control since January 2008, at that time we moved away from CVS which had been used since the project started. Effective from 1st March Subversion is no longer being used as the version control system of phpBB itself, we are now using Git with the main repository being hosted on GitHub.

This change doesn't concern end users who currently do not follow development, but users who use our Subversion repository need to be aware of these changes.

The development team had been looking at moving to a distributed version control system for a number of months, out of the candidates Git has always been the forerunner and we feel it has the best community and support to meet our needs for the coming years. Using a distributed version control system allows for greater community coding participation, meaning people outside the development team can easily develop their ideas for phpBB and contribute them back with greater ease.

Now we are aware Git has a steep learning curve, one which we are dealing with ourselves. One thing going for Subversion was that it is incredibly simple to use, as such we provide a read-only Subversion mirror of the phpBB repository for those of you who use Subversion for managing your sites and MODs. The Subversion URL has not been changed, all commits are now forwarded from Git. To facilitate the learning of this new version control system, and ensure the developers don't do anything daft, we have a number of Git related resources on our wiki. Git We are looking forward to your contributions!

Finally, we'd like to thank David Soria Parra for his assistance during the migration and continued support with all Git related queries.

[..::Frans::..]

Not only has GIT a steep learning curve, it is full of bugs when used on a windows system. If you look at all the work and trouble we have been through just to make git work on my (win7) system i'll bet that many many (if not all) users won't go through all the trouble (of using hacked old versions of some outdate dll's that ruion your system)...

Yes, GIT is potentially a nice subversion system (if it would be called a very very early alpha - in my opinion it is only finished for about 3%), all flaws, the absolute extremely stupid error messages, the steep learning curve and the fact that it is still missing a normal gui makes it an absolute no-no for me, so i really really cán't figure out why phpbb3 would even consider using GIT. On the other hand, i stopped wondering about decisions made by .com a long time ago as 90% of their decisions are......strange (wow, i found a really nice word for it)

just my 2 cents though.....

[Obsidian]

so i really really cán't figure out why phpbb3 would even consider using GIT.

It's a lot, and I mean a lot easier for the community to contribute with git, as opposed to SVN.

[eviL3 Igor]

There is an SVN mirror.

[..::Frans::..]

so i really really cán't figure out why phpbb3 would even consider using GIT.

It's a lot, and I mean a lot easier for the community to contribute with git, as opposed to SVN.

Hmmm, ok, just to make sure: you read my message ?? It took me and Handyman of Life 2 evenings just to get it working on our own repo (no, not installing, that part took me another evening).

Which part makes it easier for users to contribute with git you think ??

[Obsidian]

Apparently that's just an issue with msysgit; quite a few on .com report not having that issue with tortoisegit and a few other git clients.

[..::Frans::..]

if you can find your way around the git bash AND check and recheck what you are doing with smartgit and afterwards do a git status again inside git bash then it works...... Tortoisegit isn't working on win7 when tortoisesvn is installed so that is not an option. Smartgit has many many flaws, but git has them too. Combined i can manage the current repos.....but as said, i can't imagine that anyone wants to use git over svn until all these bugs are solved.....

[topdown]

There is no issue with msysgit on Vista. Any errors I get in the UI I get in command line.
The issue is that Git does not respect it's own commands on Windows, it may on Mac or Linux distributions but not Windows.

An example, you end up with conflicts constantly in Git on my setup and it gives you either a non-fastforward error or can't finalize merge, etc..
I simply get tired of arguing with it, so
git reset --hard HEAD

Should dump all of my changes and reset everything, do a git pull, same errors.
Git did not respect it's own command.
My next option, dump it and start a new clone. Git gives very generic errors and no instruction on how to repair it. I do not have the time to sit and Google for solving Git errors every other time I try to push something. It's learning curve is a Circle, it does not follow it's own commands and has useless generic errors which makes it very hard to work with.

I believe they will need a forum just for phpBB -- git support

[NumberOne Matt]

so i really really cán't figure out why phpbb3 would even consider using GIT.

Because GIT is the only version control system that uses local repositories... It's the only system that will let users work away on their own computers at home with all of phpBB's source code... And then at any time they can push their changes to GitHub, where the dev team can decide whether or not to commit their work to the phpBB repo... That type of collaboration was next to impossible with SVN unless you were on the phpBB team.

[..::Frans::..]

so i really really cán't figure out why phpbb3 would even consider using GIT.

Because GIT is the only version control system that uses local repositories... It's the only system that will let users work away on their own computers at home with all of phpBB's source code... And then at any time they can push their changes to GitHub, where the dev team can decide whether or not to commit their work to the phpBB repo... That type of collaboration was next to impossible with SVN unless you were on the phpBB team.

Yeah, the only problem is that all users have to:

OR
1. Buy a mac or linux machine
OR
2. Create a seperate system (virtual disk) with windows xp because git isn't working on win vista or win7
OR
3. Hack their system (windows vista or win7) and replace original dll's with hacked old versions

So, each of these three reasons alone is enough to make it a big no to windows users, still the largest part of the community....

...and this is also the reasons that git can't even be considered better than svn, as said before, in potential it could be better, when they finish the other 97% of the code and start thinking about other users than linux users only.

In short: on windows systems, GIT is the biggest disaster right after "Barbie: the game..."