Slashdot Mirror
Perl Migrates To the Git Version Control System
On Elpeleg writes "The Perl Foundation has announced they are switching their version control systems to git. According to the announcement, Perl 5 migration to git would allow the language development team to take advantage of git's extensive offline and distributed version support. Git is open source and readily available to all Perl developers. Among other advantages, the announcement notes that git simplifies commits, producing fewer administrative overheads for integrating contributions. Git's change analysis tools are also singled out for praise. The transformation from Perforce to git apparently took over a year. Sam Vilain of Catalyst IT 'spent more than a year building custom tools to transform 21 years of Perl history into the first ever unified repository of every single change to Perl.' The git repository incorporates historic snapshot releases and patch sets, which is frankly both cool and historically pleasing. Some of the patch sets were apparently recovered from old hard drives, notching up the geek satisfaction factor even more. Developers can download a copy of the current Perl 5 repository directly from the perl.org site, where the source is hosted."
I take it you have volunteered to help finish P6?
I would guess it's ubiquity and featureset.
Git is built of a patchwork of C and scripts, meaning it's something Perl6 could be a part of someday, and it's also something that's going to be quite familiar to all Perl developers, not just the Pugs guys.
And, Git seems to be quickly becoming the Subversion of DVCS -- fast, open source, everyone has it, everyone knows it, and the alternatives really don't have much compelling to offer.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Fixed the subject line for you.
Last year, I completed two important Perl-based projects for my employer. I also use Perl at least once a week to run analyses of my Web server logs. I prototype Web applications in Perl and often just put the prototype into production because it works well. I'm still using Perl that I wrote over 10 years ago, with NO changes, on several OSs. And I use Ubuntu Debian, of which Perl is an integral component.
Perl is great. If I want what it doesn't have, I use a different language. But when I want regular expressions, CPAN, quick and secure CGI, analysis of large data sets and general parsing, easy database integration, and efficient portability from server all the way down to embedded systems, Perl is the first language I consider. Ruby might be ready for the real world one day. And Python is good for other things, but it is not a replacement for Perl.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I am intrigued git and adoption by a major project like Perl is a big endorsement, so please don't take this as a rhetorical question: isn't centralization the heart of source code management? As a project lead, I'm reluctant to have repositories sprouting like mushrooms everywhere and everybody having their own little "trunk," and developers arguing who should have to merge with whom before each release. Is this reluctance totally unfounded, or easily solved administratively, or a valid concern with a peer-to-peer SCM model?