Re: a few scenarios before I create my first repo [Scanned]

Junio,

I am deeply priveleged that a guy like you would answer my simple Q's, 
especially in holiday time !
Especially as now I've discovered a seperate list for users at 
gman.comp.version-control.git.user - apologies for posting here...

What's [scanned]?

sorry, its just something Sophos adds to our outgoing email to show its 
virus checked it

quoted

(1a) Do I need to install windows git on the same machine I want to
store the files on ?  Or can I install git on my workstation PC and
create the repo on the server ?

The model employed by git is not "client working with centralized server".
On whichever machine you want to be recording your changes (aka "running
'git commit'"), you would need to have git installed.

Ok, I'll install git on workstation, where I'll be running the bash / gui 
from
but I'll create the repo on the server (for backup purposes) - so won't need 
to install git there I'm assuming?

 >> (1b) if i create a repo on my office PC, can it easily be moved

quoted

(including all history) to another PC (e.g. LAN server) if we decide to
implement git across the team (If not, or its inconvenient, I need to
create the repo on the server)

git is a distributed source code management system.  People often deploy
one (or more, in hierarchical fashion in an advanced set-up) bare server
repository for everybody to meet and synchronize.  Each developer has one
repository (or more) on his or her own on his or her machines.  Most
notably, if you work on your notebook and on your desktop (i.e. two
machines), you will have (at least) one repository on each of them [*1*].

quoted

(2) if i create a repo on my work PC, can it easily be migrated
(including all history) to a repo on github (etc.) ?

I do not know about github in particular (that's #github question) but in
principle, yes.  Easy exchange of development histories across
repositories is the whole point of distributedness.

super!
I'm sorry distributed SCM was new to me
last time I used SCM was 10yrs ago - Visual Sourcesafe, PVCS (grrr), 
clearcase (not bad)

quoted

(3) if I create a repo and commit the first baseline, can I later create
an ancestor commit to that baseline, if I subsequently find an older
version of the project lying around on the file system (or, same concept
i guess, if i find a project version that sits between say version v1.0
and v1.1 (where v1.0 is the parent tag of v1.1) can i interleave the
project files as say v1.01.

You can graft the older ones behind the root commit and filter-branch the
result to cast the graft in stone.  You are strongly recommended to do
that in one repository first, and have reasonable level of confidence in
the result before you publish it to other repositories, as running
filter-branch to rewrite the history after people (or yourself) cloned the
history to multiple places would cause trouble to thoese .

that's great, it will allow us to capture the flow of work in our project so 
far, and amend if some other version turns up !
Your answers are enough for me to proceed and give git a go.

For more details, see the user-manual.  Don't dive into manual pages for
individual commands, which are for people who already understood the basic
concepts in the user manual.

thanks, your overview here has really helped

[Footnote]
*1* Maybe we should change our pricing structure to be based on the number
of repositories, not on the number of users.  Currently we charge $0 per
user, but we should change $0 per repository ;-)

LOL !
you guys are great, thank you on behalf of people like me

Happy Christmas !