Version control systems

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

> So I suggest we propose moving all the core packages to git, and we
> translate all those for which nobody objects to the change.  For the others,
> we'll keep them in darcs and live with the pain.

Does this mean my (now the communities) FilePath library is going to
get moved over to git?

I personally don't know Git, and while I'm sure I'll be learning at
some point, I'm always nervous about learning a VCS on something I
care about, as mistakes can go quite wrong. In addition, things like
the Yhc build scripts already check out the darcs version, so will
have to be modified*.

If it really makes the life easier for people who are having lots of
VCS pain at the moment, then its hard to object. But many of the
comments in this discussion, about how everyone is going to flock to
GHC just as soon as it switches to Git, seem overly optimistic. I
think GHC is a few years off becoming drive-by hacker friendly, for
many other reasons.

The halfway house of switching the compiler, and leaving the libraries
in darcs, seems desirable. If Git turns out to be wonderful, as people
claim, moving the whole way over is fairly easy and a simple choice.

Thanks

Neil

* Modifying the Yhc build scripts is much harder than modifying the
GHC build script, as they are 10,000 lines of Python (a language I
don't know) in a very complex framework (which I also don't know)! Of
course, this is something for the Yhc team to deal with...