[U-Boot] Mirror to github

[Jerry Van Baren]

Jon Smirl wrote:
> Six people have various modifications to u-boot hosted on github.
> These projects aren't linked to each other.
> 
> I just talked to the github people. To fix this the main u-boot repo
> needs to be pushing a clone of itself to github. This is free to do,
> just make a git hub account and then set your repo to mirror changes
> there. Once the mirror is in place, github users can fork from from
> it. Now github can links these forks to the root repo and not keep six
> copies.
> 
> The linux kernel git tree is already being mirrored at github.
> 
> The effect of this is to create a public place where people can work
> on patches for u-boot.

Hi Jon,

This seems like a good idea to me but bears thinking about...

Just to reiterate some history, U-Boot was hosted on SourceForge for a 
long time, but SF became slower and slower.  When it became intolerably 
slow, Wolfgang took the bits off and we transitioned to git, hosted on 
denx.de.  This has worked *extremely* well.  Even for people that are 
forking and not pushing (all of) their patches back, git has to be a 
HUGE win over trying to to the same thing with SVN.  (At CIdeas we use 
to clone the SVN repository and then control local changes with RCS - 
bleah!)

It looks like github's business model is reminiscent of SF (and borrows 
from BitMover/BitKeeper too - pay to be private).  It appears to be a 
lot less grandiose that SF - only doing git repo hosting, not the whole 
development lifecycle model (repo, bugtracking, web pages, etc.).

On the plus side
----------------
* It costs denx.de nothing to mirror the master to github

* It spreads the load (although denx.de seems to be responsive to date)

* Since git is *distributed*, github is just another repo and so we 
aren't "migrating onto" it and, if their business model fails, we 
wouldn't have to "migrate off" of it.

* It would encourage more public "private" repos - currently there are a 
lot of repos that are private or are publicly available but not 
advertised / not discoverable.  This could be a Good Thing for cross 
pollination and getting wider testing and acceptance of patches before 
they get included into the mainline.  Or not.

* Wolfgang already has the denx.de infrastructure set up, but this may 
give denx.de relief on the sysadmin work.

On the negative side
--------------------
* Wolfgang would potentially give up some (mostly illusionary) control.
* Brand dilution?  Would people get confused which was master?  Do we care?


Questions
---------
* How stable is github?  What is their long term viability?
   * Do we care?
* Who is github?  What is their relationship with EngineYard?
   * (EngineYard is pretty expensive host for a free service.)
   * (<http://logicalawesome.com/> are the guys behind github.)
   * Do we care?
* What questions haven't I asked?

Thanks,
gvb