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Windows Switch To Git Almost Complete: 8,500 Commits and 1,760 Builds Each Day (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in February, Microsoft made the surprising announcement that the Windows development team was going to move to using the open source Git version control system for Windows development. A little over three months after that first revelation, and about 90 percent of the Windows engineering team has made the switch. The Windows repository now has about 4,400 active branches, with 8,500 code pushes made per day and 6,600 code reviews each day. An astonishing 1,760 different Windows builds are made every single day -- more than even the most excitable Windows Insider can handle.

10 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Linus Wins Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Say what you will about Mr. Torvalds, but that magnificent bastard has smacked down many a foe over the years. This is really sweet. If the only thing Linus ever did was to invent git, then that would have been enough. But no, he had to write an operating system besides. When history is written, Linus's inspiration will shine forth from the Pantheon of greats.

    1. Re:Linus Wins Again by chispito · · Score: 5, Funny

      When history is written, Linus's inspiration will shine forth from the Pantheon of greats.

      And those historians should take caution, lest they call his operating system "Linux" and are forevermore haunted by Stallman's ghost.

      --
      The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    2. Re: Linus Wins Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Software is not a zero sum game. Windows' wins are not Linux's losses.

    3. Re:Linus Wins Again by scdeimos · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you read TFA you'd have noticed that Microsoft isn't using Vanilla Git. Using their normal embrace-extend-extinguish mindset they've created their own GVFS (Git Virtual File System) and forks of Git server and client that only work in a GVFS-enabled ecosystem so that they can handle the massive number of files in the Windows source code.

    4. Re:Linus Wins Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Stallman's not dead, he just smells that way.

    5. Re:Linus Wins Again by OrangeTide · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We have Linus' famous picture on posters and t-shirts at my work. (NVIDIA)
      My boss was sitting just a few feet beyond the camera when Linus had his rant too. It was epic, many of the Nvidians were squirming in their seat.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  2. Re:VSS ? by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Funny

    When did they stop using Visual Source Safe ?

    Microsoft Visual SourceSafe was first released in 1994, so by my estimate they stopped using it in 1994.

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    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  3. Something's wrong by Drunkulus · · Score: 5, Funny

    I ran a git pull origin master, which seemed to work fine, but now I have a bunch of code that's copyright 1993 Digital Equipment Corporation?

  4. Cool stuff by swillden · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The work they've done to make Git scale to fit their needs sounds great, and I see they've open-sourced the key components. That's awesome. At the moment it looks like GVFS is Windows-only (not a big surprise -- and not a complaint; they built what they needed). I'd like to see someone port it to Linux and make this infrastructure more broadly available. It sounds like it would be much nicer to work on than the "repo" tool that Android layers on top of Git to enable managing a whole bunch of smaller repositories.

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    Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  5. inaccurate by lucm · · Score: 5, Informative

    You obviously didn't RTFA. They had to create this GVFS thing because their code base is huge and they don't want to sync hundreds of gigs between remote locations. Also they were not using VSS before switching to Git, they were using Perforce.

    It's not a WTF. It's a great achievement and will probably become a standard component of large-scale git repos. If you ever had to deal with huge repos that are used by teams in many timezones you'd understand that.

    For reference, the Linux kernel git repo is about 6GB all in. The Windows git repo is 300GB. We can all guess that in that 300GB there's a fair amount of dead wood but still, in an era where storage is dirt cheap, one shouldn't have to trim down a code source repo because the vcs can't keep up.

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    lucm, indeed.