RFC: migrating to git

[Johan Tibell]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Simon Marlow <marlowsd at gmail.com> wrote:
> We're intrested in opinions from both active and potential GHC
> developers/contributors.  Let us know what you think - would this make life
> harder or easier for you?  Would it make you less likely or more likely to
> contribute?

I would also be happier hacking on GHC if it was git based. My
experience of integrating the new I/O manager wasn't very pleasant,
due to having to re-record patches and jumping through other hoops. We
also lost all the project history [1]. I also find git's tools for
working with project history (e.g. using the PickAxe feature and
better blame support) better.

Being able to keep a first class copy of the GHC repo on GitHub also
appeals a lot to me. I keep all my personal projects on GitHub and in
my experience it has led to more contributions. While we had a Git
clone of the GHC repo on GitHub in the past, it was a second class
citizen and since you could actually make your changes against that
GitHub repo, I never bothered using it.

Cheers,
Johan

1. While we managed to convert the git commits to Darcs patches, all
the patches needed to be rerecorded as one big patch before
submitting. I'm not entirely certain why, perhaps Simon M could
elaborate.