[development] FAQ: Why is Drupal still using CVS when X is a much better choice?

[Adam Light]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Angela Byron
<drupal-devel at webchick.net> wrote:
> Moshe Weitzman wrote:
>>
>> Thanks ... would you consider retitling it to "How you can help Drupal
>> migrate to a modern RCS."? I think thats more positive. Virtually all
>> agree that the current situation is non ideal.
>
> I'd be more than happy to do that if people can start adding enough
> information about relevant issues, groups, mailing list threads, etc. that
> tell people how to help, in order to warrant the title change. :)
>
> Derek? Chad? Adam? Jakob?
>
> -Angie
>

I'm not sure if, practically speaking, there is anything any one or
two people can do.  I've seen almost no support in either IRC or
various mailing lists by the key infrastructure players for SVN, and
I'm not sure saying something like "we could move to XXX if only there
were GUI clients available, so you could help by writing one of those"
is very helpful.

For the moment, I think the first major obstacle is getting the
Version Control API functional and writing the tie ins with the
project module, which Angie already mentioned in the handbook page
(the stuff at http://groups.drupal.org/node/8102).  But really, even
more important than that is the port of project* to D6.  Once all of
this is done I think the next logical step would be picking a new RCS,
because it wouldn't make sense to, in parallel, write backends,
rewrite help, etc. if we didn't know what RCS we were going to go to.

I really have no idea who would make a decision like that.  Perhaps
whomever that is (or whatever group of people that is) should raise
their hands and explain what kind of argument would need to be made
for them to be convinced.  How many GUI clients need to be available,
what platforms, etc.?  Without any solid information on who makes such
a decision and what would cause them to agree to move from CVS, I'm
not sure that we can give solid information on how people could help.
Also, just saying that the infrastructure team decides is not helpful,
because clearly not all "members" of the infrastructure team are
equal.

Adam