Re: Personal git repositories

[Darren Hart <dvhart@linux.intel.com>]

On 04/26/2011 10:05 PM, Tom Zanussi wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 21:53 -0700, Darren Hart wrote:
>>
>> On 04/26/2011 09:39 PM, Tom Zanussi wrote:
>>> On Tue, 2011-04-26 at 20:00 -0700, Darren Hart wrote:
>>>> git.yoctoproject.org hosts a number of different repositories, some of
>>>> which host limited user contributions (such as poky-contrib). These
>>>> repositories are setup and administered by a yoctoproject.org system admin.
>>>>
>>>> As our developer base grows, the need for user creatable git trees also
>>>> grows. Eventually, *-contrib isn't going to scale, and neither will the
>>>> system admin. There are plenty of available places individuals can
>>>> create publicly accessible trees (github, kernel.org, or any number of
>>>> similar sites). However, I think it would be beneficial for at least
>>>> very active developers to be able to create and destroy trees on a whim,
>>>> without having to involve the system admin with each event.
>>>>
>>>> kernel.org provides a git web interface for user created trees. I'd like
>>>> to see something similar available at yoctoproject.org in order to
>>>> establish single place to go looking for "yocto developer trees". Users
>>>> would have to justify their request for a user account and agree to a
>>>> terms of use. This has served the Linux kernel community very well. I
>>>> think it could do the same for us.
>>>>
>>>> Note: I am not offering to setup such a service or even say that it's
>>>> possible with the current resources. I just wanted to throw the idea out
>>>> there and see if others have found a similar gap in the development
>>>> environment and if this idea would address that gap.
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts?
>>>>
>>>
>>> My thinking (I guess - I didn't really think that much about it at the
>>> time) when requesting the meta-intel-contrib repo was that repos that
>>> could expect to get continual contributions from many people would
>>> benefit from having a corresponding -contrib version - so far that's
>>> poky-contrib, linux-yocto-*.contrib, and openembedded-core-contrib.  To
>>> me bsp repos fit the same criteria, but I'm not the one who has to
>>> manage it all, so I understand the desire to avoid the proliferation.
>>>
>>> Seems like the personal repos idea would mitigate the problem...
>>>
>>
>> I think these are two distinct but overlapping problems:
>>
>> 1) place to share on the common core (poky, linux-yocto*)
>> 2) place to share new stuff that may not amount to anything
>>
>> For #1, the *-contrib git repositories make sense to me. It provides a
>> single repository that a lot of people use and reduces the git remote
>> management for everyone. They are therefor worth the added complexity
>> they add to the yoctoproject git namespace and on the system administrator.
>>
>> For #2, people need to be able to prepare a tree and poke someone in IRC
>> with a git URL to try out. Many of these are likely to be short lived,
>> and to only have a single contributor. As such, they are not worth
>> polluting the yoctoproject git namespace, nor should we burden our
>> system admin with setting them up and tearing them down. Indeed, they
>> are likely to linger, continuing to pollute the namespace long after
>> they are dead trees simply due to the overhead of removing them!
>>
>> As for BSP's... these don't seem to have a lot of contributors - at
>> least from what I have seen. Typically 1 or 2 people. For that scenario,
>> I see two processes as options:
>>
>> a) add user branches:
>>   master
>>   bernard
>>   dvhart/topicA
>>   dvhart/topicB
>>   tzanussi/topicA
>>   tzanussi/topicD
>>
> 
> Yeah, that's what you and I do already.  But we now have people coming
> online who will be be continually pushing changes to their bsps in
> meta-intel and we don't necessarily want to give them write access to
> meta-intel itself right away, I assume...
> 
>> b) use the personal repositories described in #2 above
>>
> 
> Yeah, so we could create and manage meta-intel-contrib ourselves without
> bothering any admins...

Well, sort of. The personal trees would be writable only by their owner.
Otherwise you would have to manage all the user authentication. I forgot
about the new meta-intel contributors.

I would suggest we start with a pull model to get things upstream. As
they gain confidence in contributing, we can look at something where
they have more control of a repository, probably still will need a
meta-intel-contrib in this case.

--
Darren

> 
> Tom
> 
>> While it is possible to use poky-contrib for things like this, I think
>> it is non-intuitive to use a repository as a remote to a repository that
>> isn't based off the remote repository (like BSP layers which aren't part
>> of poky). For most users, this will result in pulling down MBs of
>> unnecessary git objects. Yes, you can use --reference when cloning. Yes,
>> you can use fancy fetch commands. No, nobody will.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
> 
> 

-- 
Darren Hart
Intel Open Source Technology Center
Yocto Project - Linux Kernel