trunk: git mirror -- periodically import svn into github or gitorious #2237

Instead of migrating svn to git, this ticket proposes we periodically (e.g., nightly) import the latest svn trunk to a remote hosted git repository, as a mirror.

• some developers prefer git (e.g., several third-party plugins are hosted on github.com)
• github.com boasts "social coding" and Piwik's strength is its community
• this might reduce load on dev.piwik.org's svn (and saves us from hosting our own git repository)

Setting up a git-repo (gitorious) is quite easy. Migrating to git would improve collaboration a lot, other developers will feel more comfortable contributing code as their name will not disappear in the commit history (git preserves the author).

SVN users could still use SVN through the git-svn tool.

Hosting everything on github.com will make it a lot easier to submit patches (pull request).

Only mirroring the repo on github won't make this possible as it always needs someone mergin in the changes from a pull request + commiting those changes back to svn (and the original author of the patch will again go into the void).

Let's treat this as a first step. Mirroring svn in git has the least impact on the current workflow of active committers, build scripts, continuous integration, and Trac performance.

We can re-evaluate migrating our repo later. For example, if we see a lot of pull requests with commit-ready patches.

I've setup a mirror for piwik on Github and added vipsoft as second owner. The repository is updated every 30 minutes.

http://github.com/piwik/piwik

vipsoft: I also pushed tags now.

halfdan thanks! is it ready to be used? is the sync SVN->GIT automatic every day?

I guess now we should advertise it on the site and close this ticket.
How could we maximise chance of users seeing this and suggesting patches etc ?
Also can you please add mattab as admin?

I've added mattab as a project owner on github.

Before we close the ticket, are there any thoughts on:

• move the syncing process to one of our servers (e.g., dev6)
• handling pull requests

I think it would make sense to have the syncing process run on dev.piwik.org itselg, except if it is really CPU (or disk) intensive and lasts for a while, but it shouldn't be...?

The initial import takes about an hour. From then all the updates are pretty fast.

I haven't found the source of the svn2git rebase problem, but I did see a related pull request for a patch in a fork of svn2git.

Can we close this ticket? Or do you want to run halfdan's script on the dev.piwik.org box?

if halfdan maintains his working it's all good.. if not we could run it on our server if it's easy