[Bf-committers] [Bf-docboard] Docs: Migrating from SVN to Git + Git LFS

[Dalai Felinto]

Hi Aaron,

I have personally mixed experiences with git-lfs (Unity project hosted
on MS Azure). I found it to be very easy to get a local local
repository corrupted if not adhering to a very specific set of tools.
For instance, in Windows whether I used git tortoise, git command-line
or Ubuntu on Windows bash I could get into troubles. My point being,
let's be extra careful when validating, trying with as many different
setups as possible.

That aside I thought the whole point of using SVN for the manual was
to make it easier for contributors. To have to teach SVN for hardcore
git users seems more anecdotal (corner case) than factual evidence. If
Weblate is tackled first then I see no problems of course.

Cheers,
-Dalai-
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dalai Felinto - dalai at blender.org - www.blender.org
Blender Development Coordinator

Em qui., 20 de fev. de 2020 às 05:22, Yves Bodson
<yvesbodson at gmail.com> escreveu:
>
> thanks and very opportun..
>
> On Wed, Feb 19, 2020 at 7:18 PM Aaron Carlisle <carlisle.b3d at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Blender Developers and Blender Documenters,
>>
>> Over the years SVN, has caused several headaches from server database
>> corruptions to terrible download performance to poor branching support.
>> I believe it is time that we migrate from SVN to Git to some of our projects,
>> notably, the documentation project. The issue has been in the past that Git has
>> terrible support for binary files resulting in large download and repository sizes.
>> Over the years several hacks were made to make Git work with binary files but
>> their implementation was poor and those projects have since died.
>>
>> There is however one project that made a proper implementation and over the years
>> has grown in both popularity and stability/reliability, this being Git Large File Support (Git + LFS).
>> I will not go into the details of how  Git + LFS works but it is described well in the video [1].
>>
>> Implementation on the client-side is easy, simply make sure Git LFS is installed.
>> Server-side implementation is a bit trickier, as there is no official implementation.
>> Many open-source implementations exist however are documented here: [2]
>>
>> I have set up a test project on GitHub [3], if people want commit access for testing
>> purpose let me know.
>>
>> Converting the documentation project to Git + LFS will involve converting both the
>> main repository and the translations repository. Unflortiantly, translators will lose the
>> ability to checkout only there languages however once implementing Weblate [4]
>> translators will no longer directly interact with the repository.
>>
>> The primary focus of this is to test how well Git + LFS will work for us and the community.
>> A goal in moving to Git + LFS is to make it easier to contribute to Blender,
>> a couple of weeks ago I had to help two already Blender contributors learn SVN over Git.
>> If it is a success for us and the community then efforts can be made into converting
>> other repositories as well. For example, the main Blender translation repository,
>> and Blender's pre-compiled libraries.
>>
>> A useful article I found from a game production studio that also made the switch
>> is a very helpful and talks about why they made the switch along with the process they took.
>> I have linked the article below [5].
>>
>> 1. https://youtu.be/uLR1RNqJ1Mw
>> 2. https://github.com/git-lfs/git-lfs/wiki/Implementations
>> 3. https://github.com/Blendify/blender-manual
>> 4. https://developer.blender.org/T68588
>> 5. https://labs.karmaninteractive.com/svn-to-git-its-about-time-ae4c468549be
>>
>> Thanks for reading,
>>
>> Aaron Carlisle
>>
>> Project administrator for the Blender 3D Documentation Project
>> Email: carlisle.b3d at gmail.com
>>
>>
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