Objections to using Git as a VCS, per discussion at  http://irclog.perlgeek.de/parrot/2009-09-17#i_1510436 .

1. Objection: Integration with trac.

• Answer 1.1:  http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/GitPlugin

2. Objection: Demonstrate that git actually is better at resolving the merging conflicts we hit in real usage.

• Answer 2.1: I know that specific examples would be great here, but does anyone actually doubt that merging is less painful in git?

3. Objection: Source code browsing tools. (including revision browsing)

• Answer 3.1: gitweb - written in Perl, easy to customize,prettier, many fancy features, like avatars. Example of an older (git 1.5.x) gitweb instance:  http://leto.net/gitweb/
• Answer 3.2: cgit - written in C, faster/less resource-heavy  http://hjemli.net/git/cgit/

4. Objection: Down-time and retraining time for developers.

• Answer 4.1: Migration will take time -- no answer to that.
• Answer 4.2: Developers can retrain with git-svn prior to migration. If anything, Using Git alone is *easier* than with git-svn. Developers can also fork the mirror of Parrot on github  http://github.com/leto/parrot and practice their git workflow.

• Answer 4.3: Git supports a workflow very much like the existing SVN workflow. It's not the ideal Git workflow, but it's similar enough that retraining will be short. (See also GitCookbook-Pm.)
• Question 4.4: How many existing active committers and developers might need retraining? I suspect the number is small.

5. Objection: Safety of the core source (limiting the damage possible accidentally or by new committers)

• Claim 5.1: (with git it's possible to make changes that destroy the history of the repository)
  • Counter-claim 5.1.1: This seems very unlikely to happen, and detecting/mitigating a problem is not at all difficult (see Answers 5.2 through 5.4 below).
• Answer 5.2: Have a server side post-commit hook that disallows non-fast-forward updates. That negates any possibility of a newbie messing up the master Parrot git repo.
• Answer 5.3: Also, the history is not destroyed, just altered. The history is still there and can easily be fixed from another Parrot git repo.
• Answer 5.4: Every single git work tree of Parrot is a backup of the entire source code history. Currently, if the svn repo on parrot.org were to be hit by a meteor, we would be in a bad way. Our code is safer in git.

6. Objection: Upstream projects depend on getting Parrot from svn.

• Claim 6.1: Ensure that those projects are given sufficient advance notice of any VCS switch. This includes HLLs and derivative projects such as mod_parrot. A list of such projects should be maintained.
  • Counter-claim 6.1.1: According to Parrot policies, HLLs and other projects should not be dependent on the VCS but should restrict their work to released versions of Parrot. Projects that choose to have a dependency on the master Parrot VCS do so at their own risk.
• Answer 6.2: It is also reasonably trivial to have a subversion mirror of the Parrot git master branch.

7. Objection: HLL's that want to be able to say that they require a certain minimum version/revision of Parrot will have a harder time, since git commit SHA1's are not "linear."

• Answer 7.1 : HLL's should be tied to a released version of Parrot.