Background:
At the Mozilla AllHands in Sept2011, I was surprised to find that my proposed session on git was accepted, and even more surprised at how well this session was attended! The room was full of people from all different groups across Mozilla. And boy, were people passionate. The slides don’t capture the lively back-forth discussions, but this is obviously a topic that people care deeply about, hence my blog post.
Here’s a quick summary of the main speaking points:
- Some projects in Mozilla are now basing their code in github.com, not on Mozilla’s existing release infrastructure. They do this despite the fact that github in one sense has reduced functionality (doesnt do all builds/test/automated-regression alerts/etc), and despite that using github like this causes extra manual headaches of periodically importing/exporting code, and complicates branch mechanics of releases. So why do this?
- Theory#1: git vs hg
- Some people prefer to use the git commandline tool. At same time, some people prefer to use the hg commandline tool. Each Distributed Version Control System has various technical merits, and drawbacks, so I put this git-vs-hg debate into the same category as an emacs-vs-vi debate. (I do *not* mean that as a put down – I mean this in the nicest possible way – the reality of life is that people have their own unique hard-earned preferences)
- Theory#2: github vs hg+bugzilla+graphserver+tbpl
- Instead of this debate being about the mechanical differences of the command line tools, I instead believe the debate is actually about Developer Workflow. This is not just theoretical; it makes a day-to-day difference to how developers get their job done.
- Every mozilla developer ends up using hg+bugzilla+graphserver+tbpl. These are organically grown, over the years, and each went from hacky-experiments-to-mission-critical once people started to rely on them. However, they are not smoothly cross-integrated.
- Mozilla saw a jump in checkins-per-day when tbpl.mozilla.org went live; tree closures were shorter, in part because people could more easily figure out who broke the build, and who/what to back out. (Of course, there’s more to it then *just* tbpl, but the usability issue here is the key point).
- While different people have talked about this, in different companies over the years, I think github.com is a really compelling proof point that good developer workflow makes a difference. If you can make it easier for a developer to find a bug, get the bugfix reviewed and landed, and be able to see if it made a difference, developers will WANT to use your production systems.
- Apart from workflow, there’s also security and autonomy concerns. How valuable are your bug discussions, review history, regression tracking? Who else would you entrust this valuable data to? If you find someone you trust, how do you know they’ll be around as long/longer then Mozilla?
Hal Wine has now got up-to-speed in this area because of his work on git-staging. Next, Hal is starting to see how feasible would it be to support both git command line tools and hg command line tools in our production RelEng + WebDev + IT systems. And meanwhile, Hal, LauraT, myself and some others are gathering to see what we can do to improve developer workflow. As Mozilla grows, its important to make it easier to do coding work here – after all, this is one way to encourage more people to contribute, and to help Mozilla scale.
If you have suggestions, or want to help, we’d love to hear from you – or if you prefer, you can just follow the tip of the iceberg in bug#713782.
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