[clue-admin] git.

[David L. Anselmi]

Here's what I've been thinking about.  More on synergy with other ideas later.

The last time we tried to recruit someone to manage our web pages the combination of ssh, cvs, HTML, 
and PHP was too much[1].  I think those are all good things to learn and I don't mind if 
contributing to the group is a learning experience.

I plan to start using git to replace the VCSs I use.  It seems likely that it would make it easier 
to get our web code (eliminating ssh) and it seems more relevant to Free Software than cvs (making 
learning more valuable).  So I'm planning to put our code in git and provide directions on how you 
can get it and run it on your machine.

 From there it seems that a typical work flow takes care of publishing updates.  There is 
documentation on how to submit changes and publish them.  A gatekeeper can check things until people 
prove they should be allowed direct access[2].  Of course other efforts may overcome this part but 
we'll see who gets done first.

Once we have the code in git, it probably isn't too hard to put other things there.  The code 
repository no longer requires a specific backup because anyone who cares can do that easily[3].  So 
the alias list, Apache config, etc. can be checked in and then they don't require specific backups 
either.

But wait, there's more!  Besides our code, we care about our archive.  So let's see how to put that 
in git so it can be mirrored by whoever wants it (not a new idea, though possibly easier than the 
one at[4]).

Can we get to the point where we don't need backup software, just a git pull?

So admittedly I'm skipping the recovery process that should come first.  That would include glue to 
move stuff from git to the live locations, sanitize non-public info, etc (which starts to look like 
some puppet manifests to me).

One of the downsides of Drupal is that it doesn't use git for a backend, so it's harder to share. 
Does it keep a history of changes?  That's something that I like about our current system but no one 
else may care.

So this is a lot more half-baked musing than how-to.  The thing that I will do is figure out how to 
put our code into git and make it available.  Once I figure out how to self-host it, it may go to 
Gitorious[5], depending on how OBE the whole idea is.

Dave


  1) We don't have cvs published so access requires a server account.  At this point fixing that 
seems to have lower margins than other options.

  2) We do that currently, Dennis and I are the only committers for the past year.  We've been easy 
about granting direct access except the technical hurdle seems to have kept people away.  And Drupal.

  3) If too few people care we're screwed, which is pretty close to our current situation.  It is 
easy to mirror a repository with git, right?

  4) Apologies for the language: http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2009-February/012763.html