Re: What's cooking in git.git (Jan 2013, #06; Mon, 14)

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

[New Topics]

* jc/cvsimport-upgrade (2013-01-14) 8 commits
 - t9600: adjust for new cvsimport
 - t9600: further prepare for sharing
 - cvsimport-3: add a sample test
 - cvsimport: make tests reusable for cvsimport-3
 - cvsimport: start adding cvsps 3.x support
 - cvsimport: introduce a version-switch wrapper
 - cvsimport: allow setting a custom cvsps (2.x) program name
 - Makefile: add description on PERL/PYTHON_PATH

 The most important part of this series is the addition of the new
 cvsimport by Eric Raymond that works with cvsps 3.x.  Given some
 distros have inertia to be conservative, Git with cvsimport that
 does not work with both 3.x will block adoption of cvsps 3.x by
 them, and shipping Git with cvsimport that does not work with cvsps
 2.x will block such a version of Git, so we'll do the proven "both
 old and new are available, but we aim to deprecate and remove the
 old one in due time" strategy that we used successfully in the
 past.

My reading of the review discussion of this series, and the
discussion in the $gmane/213170 thread, is that the approach
outlined in this series is something Git-side is comfortable working
with.

I personally think it will be slightly less work on your side to
keep the cvsps 3.x + new cvsimport combo improving, because you no
longer need to worry about punting to the old cvsimport.  In
addition, I think the new layout would make it easier for the new
combo to gain trust of existing Git userbase over time by adding
more t965x series of tests that correspond to the tests in the t960x
series, working on the same (simple) CVS histories, demonstrating
that the result would be what users expect, and guarding the code
from future breakage.  By giving options to pick and choose both old
and new cvsps, I think it will make it easier for distros to include
cvsps 3.x sooner, promoting its adoption, which will in turn benefit
us.

I converted one of Chris's follow-up test tweaks to this to
illustrate how it can be done without breaking tests for the
original cvsimport, but didn't do all of them.  Chris, is this a
foundation we can work together on top?

Even though I assigned Author: to the "start adding cvsps 3" patch,
I forgot to forge Eric's sign-off to it.  If Eric is OK with the
direction this series is going, I'll do so and advance the rerolled
series to 'next'.

Thanks.