[devel] [Fwd: Re: "Producting Open Source Software" book and distributed SCMs]

[Alexander Bokovoy]

Это для обязательного прочтения всем! Линус, как всегда, четко и очень
точно выражает свои мысли. Все началось с обсуждения книги Карла Фогеля, 
но дальше, по сути, Линус выдал манифест разработчика в распределенном мире.

-------- Исходное сообщение --------
Тема: Re: "Producting Open Source Software" book and distributed SCMs
Дата: Tue, 1 May 2007 09:15:29 -0700 (PDT)
От: Linus Torvalds <torvalds на linux-foundation.org>
Кому: Jakub Narebski <jnareb на gmail.com>
Копия: git на vger.kernel.org
Ссылки: <200704300120.42576.jnareb на gmail.com>



On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> 
> Among others, author advocates using version control system as a 
> basis for running a project. In "Choosing a Version Contol System" he
>  writes:
> 
> As of this writing, the version control system of choice in the free
>  software world is the Concurrent Versions System or CVS.

Well, I actually personally suspect that the original Linux method of
"patches + tar-balls" is a perfectly valid method of source control
management, and in many ways preferable over CVS.

So no, I don't think using a version control system should be the
_basis_ of running a project. Version control comes pretty far down the
list, long long after "good taste" and "willingness to do things rather
than talk about them", the latter of which tends to kill more
hypothetical projects than even CVS has ever done.

The _basis_ of an open source project is a good manager, a good idea,
and a realization that what matters most is _using_ the end result,
rather than the idea or discussions or "cool features".

The SCM becomes relevant only once you are far enough along that
tar-balls and patches really don't work, and that might well take years.

[ I'm really serious: I think a lot of the good practices that the
kernel   project has gotten is exactly because of the "patches rule"
mentality.

   We now use real revision control, but I really *really* believe that
   pushing patches around is a much better way of managing stuff than
   with CVS or any other centralized model, because in the centralized
   model it always ends up being about the "core team". In contrast, even
   if there is a core team, if they just push patches around and discuss
   them as such, non-core-team members are automatically basically all
   equal.

   And avoiding the politics, and avoiding the "five people are special"
   mentality is a *lot* more important than the limited and broken
   tracking capabilities that CVS brings to the table.

   So maybe I'm just in denial, but I really believe that the fact that
   the kernel was basically maintained _without_ an SCM for a decade was
   actually a *good* thing, considering the alternatives. ]

> Further on much of examples of managing project and managing 
> volunteers revolves around the idea of "commit access", and it is 
> assumed implicitely that version control system is centralized.

Karl Fogel is wrong.

It's an understandable mistake to do, since commit access is so
important in a centralized environment, and he probably has never used
anything else (even decentralized SCM's are often _used_ as centralized
ones), but he's still *wrong*. Fundamentally so:

> The distributed SCM is mentioned in footnote in section "Comitters" 
> in Chapter 8, Managing Volunteers:
> 
> http://producingoss.com/producingoss.html#ftn.id284130
> 
> [22] Note that the commit access means something a bit different in 
> decentralized version control systems, where anyone can set up a 
> repository that is linked into the project, and give themselves 
> commit access to that repository. Nevertheless, the concept of commit
>  access still applies: "commit access" is shorthand for "the right to
>  make changes to the code that will ship in the group's next release 
> of the software." In centralized version control systems, this means 
> having direct commit access; in decentralized ones, it means having 
> one's changes pulled into the main distribution by default. It is the
> same idea either way; the mechanics by which it is realized are not
> terribly important.

That's just making excuses. Yes, you can use the same words, and say
that you call the two TOTALLY DIFFERENT things "commit access", and
then, because you've made two totally different things use the same
term, you claim that it's the same thing, and the differences aren't
"terribly important".

It's like saying that a distributed (or threaded, for that matter)
algorithm and a linear algorithm both result in the same result, so the
"mechanics" of the algorithm are not terribly relevant: they're both
algorithms.

Anybody who has ever done any distributed algorithms realizes that the
mechanichs are *hugely* important.  The difference between a distributed
situation and a centralized one is absolutely humongous. It changes
literally everything.

Does the fact that you *can* run a distributed algorithm on one machine
make it the same? No. Does the fact that the end result is called the
same make the two the same? No. It's a totally different model, and they
share almost none of the issues.

When it comes to "commit access", not only is the term nonsensical in a
distributed environment, even if you want to use that term to describe
the notion of "gets pulled into the next release", it's not even TRUE.

People like Andrew, Ingo, and Davem have what Karl would probably call
"commit access". Andrew and Ingo have it even though they don't actually
even use git to synchronize with me. But no, they don't actually get
pulled into the next release by default _anyway_ - there's always a
conscious choice after the fact, rather than any implicit permission.

I quite often tell maintainers that I won't pull their stuff, simply
because the changes look too scary, and I'm too close to a release. Yes,
it happens less often than me just silently pulling it, but that's not a
sign of "commit access", that's a sign of the fact that the process
_works_ in the first place. If we spent all our time arguing about it,
and people didn't just "know" how to behave, we'd never get anything done.

So that "get pulled by default" has _nothing_ to do with commit access,
and everything to do with much higher-level process issues. And it's
something that distributed development makes _possible_ in a way that
the centralized model with "commit access" simply does not.

Miles and miles apart. And a very important distinction.

(Btw, I'll argue that it's really important inside companies too, even
when the source control in question is "controlled". When you do things
like validation, you shouldn't just allow "commit access" to the tree to
be validated. The validation group should maintain a tree that *they*
control, and getting things accepted into their tree should be just one
step on a "release schedule")

> Linus has said that fully distributed SCM improves forkability:

Yes. There's two issues to forkability:

  - all real development happens as "micro-forks", and so you should make
    that easy, whether it's an "inside" developer or somebody else who
    just has a wild and crazy idea that might just work.

  - all real _honesty_ comes from a belief that the code *can* be forked,
    and that even the original developer and/or top maintainer cannot
    force his world-view on anybody.

Both of these are important, but the latter is important not because it
should be the "normal case", but just because the _knowledge_ that a
fork can happen should keep people honest.

Big forks due to fundmanetal personality clashes (they are sometimes
about technology, but even when they are ostensibly about technology
issues, they are often very much about strong personal ideas about that
technology) are painful. But they should be painful not because of the
SCM in question, but simply because handling personality issues is
inherently painful.

The SCM shouldn't allow people to be a*-holes and control freaks.

And I think Karl Fogel agrees with me on that. When he says

    .. the more serious the threat of a fork becomes, the more willing
    people are to compromise to avoid it.

he's right on the money, and I _think_ he meant it in the good way
(compromise and trying to work with people is absolutely a _must_).

> Besides that, what are the differences between managing project using
>  centralized SCM and one using distributed SCM? What is equivalent of
>  committers, giving full and partial commit access, revoking commit 
> access?

So here's what happens for the kernel:

  - we simply don't *have* commit access

  - there's no "partial", and there's not "revoking"

  - there are people I trust, but I don't trust them implicitly in the
    sense that I give them the keys to my repository. If they go crazy,
    there's nothing to revoke. NOTHING. If they go crazy, I just don't
    pull from them. It's really rhat easy!

  - there are people I trust in certain areas, but that doesn't mean that
    they can't make changes everywhere. It just means that I won't pull
    unless I see that the changes are only to those areas.

    And again, it's not an "up-front" decision: when people ask me to
    pull, they tell me (by way of a diffstat) what they changed, and I
    can - and actually do this, although mostly because it avoids
    mistakes - verify it, because the pull always tells me what got
    changed.

  - In fact, what happens occasionally is that I pull something, and tell
    people "nope, that won't do" and just discard their changes. It
    doesn't happen every day, but it happened yesterday - David Miller
    (who is one of the top developers) sent me a fix, I fetched it and
    told him it was incomplete and I wouldn't pull until it was fixed.

Notice? No partial commit access, no revoking, no granting. No politics.
No up-front "you have rights". Just a very basic issue: trust.

And the nice thing about this is that if some subsystem needs to make
trivial changes to another subsystem, they don't need to ask for
permission. They just do them, AND THEN THEY EXPLAIN THEM! And if they
really were trivial and obvious (and that's almost always the case),
they just get pulled normally. No special dispensation.

This is somethign that a centralized repository with commit access
fundamentally *cannot* do! If a maintainer who has partial commit access
needs to fix something else in order to make his subtree work, he's
basically screwed. He cannot commit his changes to *his* area, just
because they depend on a fix to another persons area, and he cannot
commit that.

Centralized SCM's are *fundamentally* broken. And the whole "commit
access" is very much part of that breakage. A distributed system doesn't
have it, doesn't need it, and is much much better off without it!

This is why I said Karl was totally off when he said that there's an
equivalent to "commit access" in a distributed system too. It's just not
true. Everything that people use "commit access" for just entirely goes
away!

> How good support for tagging and branching influences creating code 
> and build procedure? Is distributed SCM better geared towards 
> "benovolent dictator" model than "consensus-based democracy" model, 
> as described in OSSbook?

I think branching is so fundamnetal to being distributed, that asking
whether good support for something like that is important for build
procedure is just not a valid question. It's like asking "How important
is water to your social life?" It's supremely important in the sense
that without water, you wouldn't have a social life, but that's because
you wouldn't _exist_ in the first place. But does that make water
_directly_ important to your social life? Probably not, unless your life
revolves around playing water polo with your buddies.

Same goes for the benevolent dictator vs consensus-based model. I think
the distributed setup has advantages for both, and the advantages are
much more fundamental than anything direct. You can use distributed for
either model, and in both cases, the tools a distributed system gives
you are just different (and much better).

			Linus
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
the body of a message to majordomo на vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

-- 
/ Alexander Bokovoy
Samba Team                      http://www.samba.org/
ALT Linux Team                  http://www.altlinux.org/
Midgard Project Ry              http://www.midgard-project.org/