[alsa-devel] HG vs GIT

[Trent Piepho]

On Thu, 7 Feb 2008, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > I was just wondering about this the other day.. I don't think using
> > kernel git trees would put anyone off. Anyone working on a sound card
> > driver would most likely already be familiar with using git w/ the
> > upstream kernel anyway.
>
> Right, if you are a developer, it's fine (and even better).  But, my
> concern is that the whole linux kernel tree might be too heavy for
> some casual user who just wants to try the latest version of ALSA
> driver...  "Download 50MB and use 350MB disk space just for a single
> fix?  Hell, no!"

You'll certainly get a lot fewer users of the latest driver code if they
have to download, compile and install a entire new kernel.  There are
plenty of people who will install new drivers, but won't even consider
switching from the kernel their distro came with.

It would also be a huge PITA for developers who work on multiple
sub-systems.  If I want to make a patch for an alsa driver, I have to
reboot into an alsa kernel?  I try to go a few months between rebooting.

The media drivers on linuxtv.org work similar to ALSA, with an Hg
repository of just the drivers that's designed to build out of the kernel
tree (and work with multiple kernel versions).  There is an hg-menu
interface on the server that lets developers create, delete and clone
repositories.  Each developer has their own set of repositories that they
own, with Mauro pulling from those into the master repository.  This way
you can clone repos for branching, and you don't have multiple developers
commiting directly to the same repository.