Chris Aniszczyk's (zx) diatribe

Last night, I updated the EGit and JGit websites in preparation of our upcoming release review.

It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than before.

If you’re an Eclipse project, I highly recommend you checking out the Nova theme and new default template. Having a good website for your open source project is critical to how people perceive your work. Put yourself into a user’s shoes who is trying to find information about your project. They will use a search engine and the first thing they will come across is your web page.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Are you a project hosted at Eclipse.org?

Do you like to live on the bleeding edge?

Do you like Git?

Well, good news, the Eclipse webmasters are taking beta testers!

Here’s the notice and instructions from the webmaster team…

At this time, I’m looking for three or four projects that are willing to
beta-test a working git repository at Eclipse.org. Please note the following:

-> Your PMC should be informed about (and be OK with) your desire to do this

-> We’re testing, so your current CVS/SVN repo remains your primary code
repository at all times

-> Our git repos are currently not integrated with any other Eclipse.org tool
(Committer Dashboards, ViewVC)

-> We don’t currently offer git over http/https. That will come in time.

-> Our documentation for Git is a work in progress

-> Webmaster knowledge of Git is a work in progress

-> We can certainly import your existing CVS repo into git, but now is a great
time to start fresh

-> We will try our best to preserve your “beta” git repos once we declare git
is “live”, but we reserve the right to erase it all start fresh should we
realize we’ve done this all wrong.

If all of this hasn’t scared you away, please send me an email at
webmaster@eclipse.org while CC’ing your PMC and we’ll hook you up git. You can
read our Git work-in-progress doc here:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Git

Welcome to git, folks. We’re getting there.

So please join the EGit and JGit projects using Git at Eclipse.

The only way we’ll make Git a first class experience at Eclipse is if we start using and living it.

I have some good news everyone.

The EGit and JGit projects at Eclipse are producing consumable builds via Maven3 and Tycho.

It took awhile to get the build story working due to the diverse needs of all the consuming parties. There was a desire for JGit builds to produce p2 and maven artifacts and have those consumed by the EGit build. If anyone has worked with this mixed mode situation before, they should understand the pain of getting everything working. If you’re working in a mixed mode environment or already tied to maven, I highly recommend giving Tycho a chance (the team was also very responsive when we hit issues).

We will also be scheduling a release review soon to get an official incubation build out for everyone to try and give feedback. The only way the tooling will get better is if people try it and file bugs (or even contribute patches). You can be an early adopter and try installing the latest builds. We also have an extensive contributor guide online if you’re planning to contribute patches with Gerrit running to facilitate patch review.

If you hit problems or have suggestions, file bugs and try the EGit mailing list.

Do you love Git?

Do you want to see Git at Eclipse (like other people)? Do you already mirror some of the Eclipse code base with Git?

If so, I think a good first step would be to host a Git mirror for the Eclipse code base, similar to what Apache does. In my opinion, this would at least enable people who already maintain forks of the Eclipse codebase make it easier to contribute back.

If you like this idea or have some experience with git mirroring, feel free to comment on this bug.