Git is a free & open source, distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
Linus Torvald who I believe wrote GIT considers himself a 'bit of a Git'
- he was going to call Linux - 'Freax'
and I seem to remember an interview where he stated this was the naming reason for Git . . .
Well, if we were working on Puppy 4.3 and you were proposing that we include that package, you would clone the Puppy Unleashed Git tree (unless you already had one), create and checkout a new branch, and then add the package into the Unleashed tree. Next you would run commit the change, build a new Puppy to test and verify that it worked, fix it if it didn't, and repeat until it does work. Finally, you'd have Git output a binary patch (since this set of changes involved binary files too) and send that patch (along with information about what it is, why he should include it, etc) to WhoDo or whoever is in charge at that time, via email, the forum, or bicycle delivery service, whichever is convenient.
Upon receiving it, WhoDo (or whoever) would either decide he doesn't remotely want it - subsequently deleting or ignoring the patch - or he would decide to give it a try. In the latter case, he'd probably create and checkout a new branch of either "master" or the development branch he's using. Then he'd apply the patch and make sure it applied properly, and possibly test it (depends on whether he's trusting you to have tested it - which should be made explicit - because he may not have time to personally test every single thing). Then if he likes it, he'd probably either merge the change into the development branch, or leave it in its own branch until a more convenient time to merge into the development branch.
Then, after the merge, he'd push his changes out to the repository on the server, at which point everybody else could pull from that repository to receive the changes on their ends. Then they can test, enjoy, or criticize the package to their hearts content. They can make their own improvements on their ends, and submit their patches to WhoDo to correct it.
Let me clear something up: This isn't a package repository. It is basically an online copy of WhoDo's (or whoever's) Unleashed tree, made availible so that other people can keep up to date more easily. However, it also provides a lot of features over a simple mirror of his tree, such as built in logs, the ability to display the differences between versions of a file, tools to simplify creating and applying patches, etc.
It will in fact contain all the packages that are in the official repository, because they are in the Unleashed tree. Any packages to be added to the official repository would have to go through the Git repository, and would turn up in the official package repository when the next version of Puppy is released and the new packages uploaded.
So people just making packages wouldn't really worry about Git. They'd just make their packages. (They should worry a little bit about Unleashed however, by being sure to make the package in such a way that it can basically be "dropped" into Unleashed and work. In particular, care should be taken if a pinstall.sh script is to be used, so that it will work properly when Unleashed runs that script (using mainly relative paths, for example - the current directory will either be / if PetGet is running it or /some/arbitrary/path/puppy-unleashed/rootfs-complete/ if Unleashed is running it.)).
It is the people adding the packages to the next version of Puppy who would want to worry about Git. And the people adding features or bugfixes to Puppy.
I haven't had time to start WhoDo on Git yet. I've been swamped. I guess we'll get started on Sunday, unless something goes wrong and I discover a forgotten assignment or something else that urgently needs doing. (Like how the people who hired me started impatiently demanding copies of papers that were packed in a box seven hundred miles north of my current location...)
I'll fill up the Wiki when I get a chance too.
[size=75]Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib[/size]
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