On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Erik de Bruin <e...@ixsoftware.nl> wrote:
> >> 2) several committers are "on loan" from Adobe for a very specific > >> goal (Peter and Gordon). Are they comfortable working with Git, > >> willing and able (in that they have enough time available to do so) to > >> learn Git, or would moving to Git mean that they are no longer able to > >> contribute? > >> > > > > I would be very surprised, and frankly disappointed, if they are unable > to > > make the switch. We are talking about very smart developers here, and its > > not like switching from English to Japanese. Most of the common/every day > > commands are the same and the new concepts are not that difficult to > grasp. > > Peter, Gordon, Alex and Carol are all extremely smart developers I am > > confident they will be perfectly fine. > > Any claim that the transition will be effortless is plain wrong. There > is a learning curve for each new tooling and from reading about it on > the interweb, as well as from my own efforts trying to 'get' it, the > curve for Git is rather steep. This means that if a developer is not > familiar with Git, he/she will have to invest time to learn it to be > able to contribute. > Please do not put words in my mouth. I did not say a transition would be effortless. I said I was confident that they would be capable of handling such a transition. > > In the case of Peter and Gordon the limited time they can spend on the > project has a very specific goal and is part of their day job. So, > what I'm saying is, do we want them to spend this time on (learning) > Git, or do we want them to spend time on Mustella and Falcon? > If we stopped changes in this project because we were concerned that some developers might have to learn something new than this project is doomed from the start. There are plenty of developers here familiar with Git, me among them, that would be more than happy to help people get through issues. All they have to do is ask for help. > > Repeating that Git is easy to learn doesn't make it so. At least for > me it doesn't seem to come as easily as I hoped, the paradigm is just > too different (i.e. more complicated) from the 'centralised' version > control I'm familiar with (SourceSafe, Perforce, SVN). If that > disappoints you, I'm sorry. As an average guy with average programming > skills, I'm unlikely to be unique in this, though. > I did not say that repeating Git is easy to learn makes it so, nor do I think that. It has just been my experience in migrating teams from SVN to Git that the teams I have helped make this migration often think it is harder than they think it is once they have found their "groove". Anything that is being learned for the first time takes effort. But if people go into a learning situation with a negative outlook then they are setting themselves up for a hard time. I am more than happy to help anyone on this list to get them through learning the differences in Git from SVN. > > The transition will (temporarily) lessen my ability to contribute to a > project I care about, so my current obsession with Git is now squarely > aimed at making the transition as organised and predictable as > possible. If my insistence on clarity and focus, as well as > documentation and planning, irritates you, well, I guess that > disappoints me. > > EdB > Again, do not put words in my mouth. I did not say that the insistence on clarity and focus irritates me. I am trying to answer all of the questions that you have. Some of those I am able to answer right away. Others I can not because I have not gone through the migration process and I'm basing my answers on conversations I've had with the INFRA team on IRC and the threads and issues I've read in the mailing lists and JIRA. So, any questions that you might have regarding Git, GitHub, Git clients and workflows I would be happy to help you get through. I will do my best to either explain it to the best of my ability or direct you to some resources that will hopefully help you better understand Git. -omar
