[Dune-devel] Private write access for Andreas

[Markus Blatt]

Hi,

On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 12:19:17PM +0200, Christian Engwer wrote:
> With the new git repositories we have the nice situation that we can
> allow more flexibility in the branches. Our PHD student Andreas Buhr
> has already a set of patches waiting, in order to easy merging with, I
> will allow him to create private branches in the core modules under
> p/andreasbuhr/. This is also some kind of test balloon for new
> workflows.

Given this new workflow, I was probably to fast rejecting the github mirrors:

(Disclaimer: I am relatively new to git. Therefore some of my comments
might be wrong because I lack insight to git)

I am really wondering whether this approach is such a good idea. You
are saying that it eases merging. What you save is adding another
upstream repository (the one where Andreas has write access) to your
local repository. Having it added one can merge easily between the remote
repositories. Actually, I am unsure if one even needs this. Can't
Andreas sends you or flyspray a git-diff or something like that.

If we choose your suggested route, we will have  a lot of private
branches eventually (one for every contributor). If each commit in these
repositories triggers a commit email, it will be hard to follow the
DUNE development of the main branches. Additionally, the repositories
might blow up in size, maybe putting an extra burden of work (or even
cost, if they are in the backup) on the institutions currently hosting
the servers.

If Andreas works on some features that are/might be of a general
interest, shouldn't we create a feature branch with a speaking name
for it? Then people/developers at least know the context the commits
belong to. This would at least allow for meaningfully filtering the commit
messages. (Filtering on a person's name seems rather inadequate to me).

Additionally, your approach seems to implement another caste to our
developer system. Before we had: normal people/contributors,
developers with write access, and core developers. Now there is
another one (contributors with private write access) in between the
first two. Thus DUNE might even more be perceived like an elite clube and
further keep others from contributing. Do we really want this? 

To me our already implemented system seems strict enough already and I hoped
that by moving to git, we would lower the barrier for contributors. (That is
also why I was reluctant to apply such strict pre-commit hooks in the
first place).

Having said this, I am be no means against giving Andreas write access
to the repository according to our already established guidelines.

Regards,

Markus
-- 
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