[Evergreen-dev] Git Repositories to Drop?

[Jason Stephenson]

Robin,

Thanks for the reply.  I was just about to send another email to the 
list on this topic, so I'll take the opportunity while replying to your 
message.

I want to mention that just removing an entry from the gitolite 
configuration doesn't remove the code from the server.  The actual code 
repository is left behind, so it could be added back later.  I would be 
inclined to delete or to not bring over many of these repositories if 
we're no longer maintaining them or switching to a hosted git service.

On 5/5/23 10:31, Robin H. Johnson via Evergreen-dev wrote:
> (Former BC Libraries person here, but I also run Gentoo Linux's
> infrastructure team and we have a large Gitolite install, and had run
> into capacity crunches before)

Right now, there are just two of us who actively maintain the gitolite 
infrastructure for Evergreen.  I don't think it is normally a big time 
sink.  Galen may disagree.  In preparation for some changes that we plan 
to make regarding default branch names, I've been experimenting with a 
near clone of the community setup on a local virtual machine.  I used 
the latest version of gitolite and this has exposed some issues in our 
configuration, etc.  I think we should upgrade our gitolite 
infrastructure at some point in the near future unless we do decide to 
move our hosting elsewhere.

> I don't trust that GitHub will always exist, so firstly export the repos
> as a git-bundle (be sure to include all branches, tags), and then move
> those single files into HTTP hosting somewhere - it's not
> searchable/browsable, but they are preserved and easy enough to access
> (wget https://.../foo.bundle && git clone foo.bundle)
> 
> Then, make a seperate org in GitHub and put the archive repos there -
> seperate org because it's easier to lock it down, and declare "this
> exists for archival purposes only".

Given recent experiences with Google Code, Gitorious, and other sites, I 
don't trust that any site will be around for long, so thanks for the 
above steps, they may prove useful to us and others.  I have also long 
held the opinion that there's no such thing as "the cloud," it's just 
someone else's server(s).  Additionally, when you put your stuff on 
someone else's server, you give them de facto control over their copy of 
your stuff.

That said, I'm not overly paranoid about moving to GitHub, Gitlab, or 
elsewhere.  Every developer repository is almost a backup of the remote 
after all.

Cheers,
Jason Stephenson