RFR: GIT Package VCS

[Jeffrey C. Ollie]

Horst, I'm not going to quote your email but I'm going to reply in
summary to the points you raise:

1.  Fedora isn't just a downstream, we're an upstream too - RHEL, OLPC,
and several other projects take Fedora and make changes on top of our
changes to suit their particular needs.

2.  Patches stored as binary blobs in CVS are very ugly to deal with if
you need to update that patch as conditions change.

3.  Patches stored as binary blobs in CVS loose the history that went
into developing those patches.  Sure, some patches are trivial, but
there are some patches in our packages that are HUGE and have had a
complex history.  Having the history that went into developing those
patches is immensely useful.

4.  There are some patches in our packages that will never be sent
upstream because they represent Fedora-specific policy (e.g. changes to
default values in configuration files).  The history of these files
certainly.

5.  You won't be maintainer of a package forever, and you likely won't
be the maintainer of packages in downstream products either.  Putting
the history of how you developed your patches in a central, public
location is make the job of the next person that has to touch your
packages much much easier.

6.  Regarding slow (or non-existent) network connections in much of the
world: unfortunately, the reality is that the people in these areas
probably aren't contributors to Fedora anyway.  Just keeping up with
mailing list traffic that you at least need to skim over to be an
effective Fedora contributor is going to give a dial-up connection some
serious trouble.

Jeff

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