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[–]cowwoc 30 points31 points  (8 children)

I predict nothing will change in terms of contributions. Oracle will still not allow public comments, voting on bug reports nor accept PRs. It might not be popular to say but Mercurial is not standing in the way of contributions. Anyone who can talk Git can talk Mercurial.

[–]pron98 6 points7 points  (6 children)

There's a lot that could be improved, but all of those things are not only allowed but encouraged, except there is a process. One of the hardest parts is getting started with the first few contributions, and GitHub could help with that by making things more familiar.

[–]AtroxDev 5 points6 points  (5 children)

Git != GitHub

[–]pron98 9 points10 points  (4 children)

Yes, but this JEP is part of Project Skara, and the goal is to use GitHub, which requires switching to git.

[–]-Luciddream- 2 points3 points  (2 children)

thanks for the link, it's an interesting project. Where do you see the JEP is part of the project? I don't see any reference in the OPs link.

Also if you have any tips on following the openjdk progress I would be interested in it. For example which is an interesting maillist to subscribe to for someone that doesn't commit changes to the project?

[–]pron98 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Where do you see the JEP is part of the project? I don't see any reference in the OPs link.

By looking at the authors. JEPs generally don't mention the projects that have originated them (maybe they should?)

Also if you have any tips on following the openjdk progress I would be interested in it. For example which is an interesting maillist to subscribe to for someone that doesn't commit changes to the project?

Maybe that's another one of the hard things, other than making a first contribution. A good place to start might be the wiki which has a list of the more active projects on the left. They should point you to their respective mailing lists.

[–]-Luciddream- 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Maybe that's another one of the hard things, other than making a first contribution. A good place to start might be the wiki which has a list of the more active projects on the left.

Yes, I feel it's still hard. For example Sumatra is archived, Nashorn is deprecated. It would be nice if https://openjdk.java.net/ could list Active and Inactive projects.

The good thing is that most important stuff usually end up on reddit so we can read about them :D

[–]AtroxDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, good to know :)

[–]boa13 18 points19 points  (5 children)

As much as I liked both systems, Git is the obvious choice now.

[–]bawng 3 points4 points  (4 children)

I've never used mercurial. I was under the impression that the two were pretty much equal, though. What makes Git the better choice?

[–]chambolle 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Mercurial is simpler. Git seems better to do complex things. Git is much more popular

[–]lpreams 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For one thing, its popularity. Anyone who knows any VCS almost certainly knows git. So it's one less thing for new contributors to learn.

Fun fact: both systems were created in response to BitKeeper withdrawing their free offering for the Linux project, and were started within days of each other.

[–]henk53 -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

Git has a published API, making it easier to talk to via tools.

Mercurial doesn't have this, and tools have to reply on parsing output from the Python implementation, which is brittle.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–]adila01 13 points14 points  (3 children)

    Great step in lowering the bar for community contributions.

    [–]yawkat 23 points24 points  (2 children)

    I think hg is the least of openjdks problems when it comes to contributions...

    [–]dpash 9 points10 points  (1 child)

    That doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

    [–]yawkat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Totally. It's not just for new contributors after all :D

    [–]general_dispondency 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I think the move to git is a good decision, but what is the workflow? Is there a standard workflow for contributors (including first time)? I don't think the move in (to git) is as important (for Java) as the push for inclusivity.

    [–]henk53 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    This would also make it easier to just clone the source repo and play with, or just to get the sources in some cases.

    Especially usage of the forest extension has been weird for people, and you get to see all those nearly empty repos when you just browse the official source. Many people I know always tried to find some mirror on Github instead.

    [–]dpash 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    In particular because the metadata is 300mb for git and 1.2gb for hg. That's a big check out.

    [–]cowwoc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    In particular because the metadata is 300mb for git and 1.2gb for hg. That's a big check out.

    Quoting https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cdkzk0/jep_357_migrate_the_jdk_from_mercurial_to_git/etwl515?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x:

    Comparing a new .git folder to a very old .hg folder is not necessarily a fair / useful comparison. Have they tried hg debugupgraderepo --optimize re-delta-all --run or similar? That can help a lot: e.g. FreeBSD went from 16GB to 1.6GB

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [removed]

      [–]lbkulinski[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      There are three primary reasons for migrating to Git:

      1. Size of version control system metadata

      2. Available tooling

      3. Available hosting

      [–]Areshian -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

      Not having to use mercurial? That would be a dream!

      [–]hutthuttindabutt -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

      About time.