From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Eric S. Raymond" Subject: Re: cvsps, parsecvs, svn2git and the CVS exporter mess Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2013 10:58:04 -0500 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Message-ID: <20130105155804.GB1938@thyrsus.com> References: <20121222173649.04C5B44119@snark.thyrsus.com> <50E5A5CF.2070009@alum.mit.edu> <20130103205301.GD26201@thyrsus.com> <1E7F9F86-F040-42E4-98C4-152B8CCE47CE@quendi.de> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Max Horn , Michael Haggerty , Yann Dirson , Heiko Voigt , Antoine Pelisse , Keith Packard , David Mansfield , git@vger.kernel.org To: Bart Massey X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Sat Jan 05 16:58:38 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TrW8q-0008KL-Bd for gcvg-git-2@plane.gmane.org; Sat, 05 Jan 2013 16:58:36 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755798Ab3AEP6L (ORCPT ); Sat, 5 Jan 2013 10:58:11 -0500 Received: from static-71-162-243-5.phlapa.fios.verizon.net ([71.162.243.5]:53984 "EHLO snark.thyrsus.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755781Ab3AEP6K (ORCPT ); Sat, 5 Jan 2013 10:58:10 -0500 Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 219594044B; Sat, 5 Jan 2013 10:58:05 -0500 (EST) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Bart Massey : > I don't know what Eric Raymond "officially end-of-life"-ing parsecvs means? You and Keith handed me the maintainer's baton. If I were to EOL it, that would be the successor you two designated judging in public that the code is unsalvageable or has become pointless. If you wanted to exclude the possibility that a successor would make that call, you shouldn't have handed it off in a state so broken that I can't even test it properly. But I don't in fact think the parsecvs code is pointless. The fact that it only needs the ,v files is nifty and means it could be used as an RCS exporter too. The parsing and topo-analysis stages look like really good work, very crisp and elegant (which is no less than I'd expect from Keith, actually). Alas, after wrestling with it I'm beginning to wonder whether the codebase is salvageable by anyone but Keith himself. The tight coupling to the git cache mechanism is the biggest problem. So far, I can't figure out what tree.c is actually doing in enough detail to fix it or pry it loose - the code is opaque and internal documentation is lacking. More generally, interfacing to the unstable API of libgit was clearly a serious mistake, leading directly to the current brokenness. The tool should have emitted an import stream to begin with. I'm trying to fix that, but success is looking doubtful. -- Eric S. Raymond