Workflow overview

[fu]

After a bunch of discussion, we've decided to move from Mercurial to Git. Mercurial and Git are different version control systems. If you're not sure what that is, they basically manage code and the history of how the code has changed.

One big reason for using Git is Github. Github is a service that hosts code, and provides web-based tools to manage commits and reviews. This will make it a lot easier to work collaboratively, and simplify the process of submitting patches. The changeover may be a bit of a pain, but we will work to make it as easy as possible!

We've also decided to simplify our development environment. Instead of having the $LJHOME directory contain a bunch of repositories that need to be synced and copied around -- no one has ever understood this setup without a lot of explaining and re-explaining -- we will just have one set of directories. This means we can get rid of cvsreport.pl, which is the script that does the syncing between the $LJHOME directory and the repositories within it.

Nothing will change yet, but I thought (and denise agreed) it might be a good idea to post a very basic overview of how the process will be changing.

I'm still banging on the workflow; right now I'm just working with a couple of the more experienced devs so we can get a general idea of what needs to be done. We'll invite more people for a test run once to iron out the more fiddly bits once we have a list of steps to try.I expect we'll have to adjust again after people have tried it out for real.

Don't worry! Nothing is going to happen without a lot more in the way of information and tutorials and explanations, but here is a very high-level overview.

( diagrams and details within )