best practices for multiple packages and submodules on git.d.o

[martin f krafft]

also sprach Stefano Zacchiroli <zack at debian.org> [2008.03.11.1229 +0100]:
> So, what I conclude from that discussion + the colgit thread on
> the git mailing list, is that the current best practice you are
> advocating is several git repo in neighborhood directories,
> manager via mr. Is it correct?

This is what I suggest. I don't think I want to call it advocating.
:)

> And, by the way, I do understand why this behaviour is
> reasonable/useful in some scenarios, but I fail to understand why
> the dual behaviour of following submodule heads is not implemented
> ...

I suppose it's because noone has written a convincing patch.

> Uhm, frankly it doesn't seem to me the proper use case. I would use
> branches for that, what do you mean with "gets quite annoying"?

It's annoying to keep updating the supermodule pointers to the
branch heads. I think we seem to agree that branches are better for
this.

> > > Also, maybe more of a question for alioth.d.o admins, do
> > > submodules works well with our current git.d.o infrastructure?
> > Submodules are nothing but plain git repositories, so yes.
> 
> I feel I need to refine a bit more my question then (but only
> because I haven't yet used git.d.o; feel free to point me to the
> fine manual). My concern is what would I get from git.d.o. Is it
> just a directory writable by some alioth group, on which I'm then
> free to "git init" as I see fit?

You get /git/foo, which is writeable by you. Instead of using that
as your git repository, you use it to hold your git repository, much
like /git/netconf holds ikiwiki.git and netconf.git. Within
/git/foo, you're free to do whatever you want, basically.

> If this is the case, I guess that the mapping of the solution
> you're proposing to git.d.o is to have several .git directories
> rooted somewhere under the group-writable directory I would get.
> Is it correct?

Yes.

> Would everybody be able to "git init" for new packages remotely
> without needing to ssh on alioth?

No, you need to ssh into alioth to create a new repository. This
post of mine talks about it a bit, assuming that people create the
repositories locally at first and then publish them.

  http://madduck.net/blog/2007.07.11:publishing-git-repositories/

Obviously, creating the repository is nothing else than

  ssh alioth GIT_DIR=/git/foo/bar.git git --bare init --shared=world

so you can easily script that.

-- 
 .''`.   martin f. krafft <madduck at debian.org>
: :'  :  proud Debian developer, author, administrator, and user
`. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduck - http://debiansystem.info
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
 
... the ravenous bugblatter beast of traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid
animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you --
daft as a bush, but very very ravenous);
            -- douglas adams, "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy"
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