Avery, and anybody else who might be interested: I have released a new version of externals which uses the format recommended by Avery. That should make it easier to add new features, such as the ones mentioned in Avery's email. I've switched some of my projects to it and it seems to be working fine. I've bumped the version to 0.1.0 to signify a more betaish stage :) Miles On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 9:21 PM, Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 9:06 PM, Miles Georgi <azimux@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I'll just answer by numbers, I hope it's not too inconvenient to have >> to scroll between emails to see which point I'm talking about :/ > > In general, it's better to use inline quoting. It's okay if the > quotes get long, because long messages are manageable, but messages > that require you to look at *other* messages at the same time are just > a PITA. Luckily, however, I at least remember what we're talking > about :) > >> 1. Oh, I'm not really aware of what "cvs export" does. I assumed it >> meant something very similar to "svn export" Running "ext export URL" >> on a project manage by subversion with all the subprojects managed by >> subversion simply runs "svn export URL" followed by an "svn export" >> for each subproject, hence the name. Calling it "shallow" makes sense >> for git since I'm using --depth 1, but since "svn export" doesn't >> create the .svn directories necessary to make it a working directory, >> I don't really know if I would call that shallow. For git's >> implementation of export, I was thinking of just doing a clone and >> then deleting .git/ which also wouldn't be shallow. > > Aha, sorry. In that case, it does do exactly what cvs export and svn > export do, so I take it back. I would never use it (because I always > deploy my .git directories along with the app itself... free > backups!). But the name is correct. > >> 3. I am also bothered by the inconsistency of the meaning of [main] >> and [git/svn] along with everything you pointed out. >> >> Question? Is it okay to have "/" characters in the ini section name? > > Yes. In general, a section name can have anything except a ] in it, > and a key can have anything but an = in it. (Well, obviously we > should expect that there are no CR, LF, or NUL characters either.) > > If you want to do it exactly like git, you would name your sections like > > [ext "libs/my/plugin"] > > instead of my earlier suggestion of > > [libs/my/plugin] > > This would be compatible with git-config. Also, this method means > that the [main] section could never be confused with a particular ext > section. > >> I wonder if it would be okay to just put the repository >> as the section name. That way scm and path could be excluded for >> situations where the defaults are sufficient. Although I guess this >> would have the implication of changing a projects repository >> (something that happens way more frequently than changing the path >> it's installed to) some what messy since it's being identified by its >> repository. > > I think you answered your own question there :) Personally, it feels > natural to me to index a submodule by its local path, and have the URL > be an attribute of that submodule, rather than the other way around. > This makes sense since every local path can only have one submodule on > it, while in insane situations, you can imagine having exactly the > same repo (perhaps different revisions or branches?) cloned into two > different locations. > >> But yeah, if this feature makes somebody nervous, they can just always >> explicitly give the path (which they'll have to do if it's not a rails >> app.) It also detects that it's a rails app so it will complain if >> you leave the path off in a non-rails app. It won't try to put >> something in vendor/plugins of a non-rails app just because a path is >> missing. > > Okay, if it's not in rails mode, I guess it won't cause problems... as > long as the rails auto-detection is extremely reliable and can be > turned off somehow. > >> 5. Yeah that's a good idea. I could create a command that adds an >> existing subproject to the .externals and updates the ignore properly. >> To get this effect at the moment, one would manually add the >> subproject to .externals and run "ext update_ignore" I personally >> don't usually find myself doing this though. I almost always want the >> subproject to be added to the project. I need to make an "ext >> uninstall" for backing out if you don't like it. I personally would >> rather manually remove the item from .externals than have to issue two >> commands to install it. But your idea of a save command is very >> powerful, especially with the branch switching ideas you have in #8 >> below. > > Right, it wouldn't matter which way you did it, but the other options > below fit really nicely into a 'git save' operation. > > Also, I personally think it's more elegant to not have to do "undo" > operations as a normal part of your workflow. Checkout work work work > save seems nicer to me than Checkout uninstall work work work. > > [nested submodules] >> 6. Hey that's a pretty interesting idea! I hadn't even thought about >> that as I have not yet personally encountered that use case. I've >> been hoping that rails plugins could have their own vendor/plugins >> directory because if they did I would also use something like that all >> the time. This is definitely something that should be implemented at >> some point. > > Well, like I said, I'm doing it right now in one of my projects :) > But it doesn't have to be a high priority. > >> 7. Agreed (for the most part.) I almost never want to do this for my >> own projects as I almost always want the branch tip no matter what. >> I'd rather run tests and discover that something has broke before >> deploying than have to go to all my projects and advance the commit >> manually. > > Ouch, I would never want to do it that way! If my app has been > deployed for three months and someone reports a minor bug, I just want > to fix that one bug and redeploy safely and immediately. I certainly > don't want to risk breaking everything by upgrading a bunch of > unrelated modules. > >> the way I >> currently have been handling this is by having my own rails repository >> at git://github.com/azimux/rails.git that I occaisionally will merge >> rails/rails.git with and run tests for my larger applications. If I >> like how it behaves I push the merged tip back out to azimux/rails.git >> which is what all my projects reference in their .externals file. > > This sounds like a convoluted way of just doing what I suggested. :) > > Oh, that reminds me of another feature that would be awesome: > *alternate* repository URLs. In your example above, let's say you've > made some rails customizations, anyone cloning your project will have > to get your version. But one day, the rails developers merge in your > changes, so now their primary repo (probably with more bandwidth, > uptime, etc) will work again. If the ext lists *all* the repositories > you might need, ext can just git fetch from all of them, then checkout > the commit in question, and it will always work. > >> And I would definitely not >> have it disconnected from a branch if it can be avoided. I guess it >> would checkout a specific commit but be on a branch, and then if the >> developer needed to edit the subproject, they would realize it was >> non-fastforward when they pushed and then do a rebase against the >> current tip? I'm not 100% sure how this workflow would normally occur >> as I've not yet had to rebase anything, and when I was using >> git-submodule, I would always checkout a branch tip if I had to edit >> the subproject and then would do a git add submodule/path to point at >> the new commit when I was done. > > It can be simpler than that. Essentially, what you do is: > > git fetch origin > git checkout COMMITID > git branch -D BRANCHNAME > git checkout -b BRANCHNAME > > The first checkout puts you on a disconnected HEAD temporarily, just > in case you were previously on a branch called BRANCHNAME, which would > have prevented the "delete branch" operation from working. Then we > delete the branch, and recreate it at the new location (COMMITID). > > With that in place, git will know how to do everything else > automatically, but it's up to the user. You can pull/merge the latest > changes from another branch, or rebase, etc. > > Note that as a safety measure, you probably want to refuse to actually > do the above if either of: > a) The git filesystem or index shows uncommitted files > b) The current git commit != the commit ext thinks is checked out right now. > >> 9. I wasn't planning on having any sort of commit/push-type features >> since the workflows of the SCMs are different when it comes to >> commiting/pushing. For example, if it's a subversion project it needs >> to do an "svn commit" requiring a log message. And sometimes I really >> only want to push a subset of the subprojects that I've modified. > > I think it would be really cool if ext could just figure this out. > For example, it's easy to tell that in svn, your changes have to be > committed (ie. no dirty tree) and in git, the upstream repo needs to > contain your commitid (it's been pushed). > > If you only want to push a subset of projects, that's fine, but you > can do it in the individual subdirs by hand anyhow. On the other > hand, I'd say you *don't* want to ever push the parent repo without > first pushing all your changes, particularly if you have the commitid > encoded in the .externals file, or you'll produce an un-checkout-able > repository. > >> Maybe what I could do is have "ext status" also see if a subproject >> could be pushed and issue a warning like "<subproject> has commits >> that are missing from <remote name>. Did you forget to push?" This >> would be unnecessary for subversion managed subprojects as if it's up >> to date, then it's pushed and vice versa, but for git it would be very >> helpful for when the status is empty due to commits being performed, >> but is not yet pushed out to it's origin. > > Yes, that would be almost as good. > >> I don't know if I would >> like it automatically doing the pushing though, but it could be >> doable, maybe with a command with the name "git" in it to specify it's >> scm specific, like "ext gitpush" or I could just have an "ext push" >> that does nothing for svn/cvs projects. > > I don't think it should do nothing for svn/cvs projects: it should > either help you commit, or abort with a helpful message if your repo > is dirty, or something like that. > > Hope this helps. > > Have fun, > > Avery > -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
