[llvm-dev] [RFC] One or many git repositories?

Michael Gottesman via llvm-dev
2016-07-29T15:22:17Z

I agree with Renato here. From someone who is just beginning to participate in
this thread, the sheer amount of ad hominem argument thrown about is
disappointing and unhelpful. What we need is a specific proposal to center the
discussion and then line by line review that breaks out into (potentially) more
specific discussion on individual points if they are contentious.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 29, 2016, at 7:52 AM, Renato Golin via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
> On 29 July 2016 at 15:26, Robinson, Paul via llvm-dev
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>> I believe David Chisnall up-thread cited a difference in checkout times
>> on the order of a handful of seconds versus a couple of minutes.  While
>> naively it might seem not a big deal, over time and depending on what
you
>> are trying to do yes it can be a big burden.
>
> TL;DR: This thread is dead. Let's move on.
>
> I think the biggest fallacy in this thread is that changing process is
cheap.
>
> It is certainly cheap for me to do "git foo" instead of "git
bar" from
> now on. It's moderately expensive to change my buildbot
> configurations, Zorg's builders and re-test everything for public CI.
> It's a lot more expensive to change how distributions build their
> hundreds of thousands of packages over multiple LTS releases, or how
> downstream users like Sony, Apple or ARM re-factor their entire build
> systems (which very likely link to a lot of non-LLVM stuff), and then
> some.
>
> None of that is impossible, most of that is a "one off". Most of
the
> companies and big projects "could" afford to do that.
>
> But there are two big points that people like me, Paul and David have
> been unsuccessfully trying to make obvious:
>
> 1. Not every LLVM user is as big as FreeBSD, Sony or Apple. There are
> a lot of very interesting projects (hobbyists, academia, professional)
> using Clang, LLVM, libc++, etc. that don't have the staff to do that
> move. Being a hobbyist myself, I know too well that, when a library
> radically changes the way they behave (like boost did every new
> release about 10 years ago), I will stop using it.
>
> 2. Changes in complex systems have unwanted larger consequences. Build
> systems are some of the most complex systems in existence because
> they're mostly irrational and patched together with duct tape and
> paper clips. What may be very simple for some build systems, could be
> impossible for others, and that's not the other's team's fault.
>
> So, if you have a complex build system yourself, and you spent some
> time and have figured out that it would be easy, you *cannot* assume
> it should be easy for everyone with an less or equally complex build
> systems.
>
> If you find it simple to change your own workflow towards this or that
> solution, you *cannot* assume everyone else should feel the same. This
> also doesn't diminish their intelligence or competence. Intelligent
> and competent people work in very different ways, and it's actually
> because of that fact that we can do such complex software works in a
> multitude of systems. If we were all equal, we wouldn't need to
> discuss anything. :)
>
> Mehdi said very early, and repeated many time, on some of the threads,
> something to the effect of: "Saying how hard or easy it is for you is
> an invalid argument, we need more concrete facts".
>
> I absolutely agree with that statement, but interpreting how easy or
> hard concrete facts would be fall on the same fallacy, so it doesn't
> bring us closer to consensus, it brings us closer to dissent.
>
> That is why I think this thread has already surpassed it's usefulness
> (for a long time), and we need a concrete write up on the proposal. (I
> hear it's in progress, let's wait for it).
>
> From now on, I'd propose the discussion to be *just* about this
> specific proposal, preferably over a Phabricator review on the
> document. People that have strong opinions about it should wait for
> the survey.
>
> Just to reiterate, the survey is to collect opinions in a formal and
> non-passionate manner. It will not be a "majority vote", and
we're not
> locked between these two solutions as they're absolutely drawn out in
> the documents, nor we are forced to take any decision if the community
> is clearly split. The last think I want is to destroy part of the
> community while trying to make it better.
>
> But this long thread is not doing any good either.
>
> cheers,
> --renato
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