Hi translators,
We've been using Assembla to host the svn repository for NVDA related
translations for several years now. While it has worked well for the most
part, I think it would be ideal if we can move to GitHub. Because this will
obviously impact your work, I'd very much appreciate your feedback on this.
How this would affect you:
1. Svn is significantly simpler than git, particularly for those who are
not interested in code development. While GitHub primarily uses git, it's
also possible to access a GitHub repository with svn. Svn would still be
the primary recommended way to access the repository, thus requiring
minimal change to your existing workflow.
2. You would need to create a GitHub account if you don't have one already.
3. You would need to change the URL for the svn repository in your svn
tool. You may also need to checkout the repository from scratch, though I'm
not certain on this point yet.
4. The commit emails you receive maycontain git commit identifiers rather
than svn revision numbers. I'm hoping to find a way to get svn revision
numbers instead, but this may not be possible.
5. Admins would need to learn a new interface for inviting new translators
to the team.
Reasons for considering switching to GitHub:
1. NV Access now uses GitHub for all other project hosting, including NVDA.
Moving translations to GitHub as well means we would be using the same
system, which simplifies learning and administration.
2. There have been several bugs and problems with the notifications sent
from Assembla to our server lately, resulting in problems with automatic
conversion to html files, etc. Even where such problems occur on GitHub,
they are much easier to debug.
3. We would be able to cross-reference issues, commits and people between
the NVDA and translations repositories. For example, if someone files an
issue against NVDA related to a translation, we can simply "mention" the
relevant translators so they can participate in the conversation directly.
4. We can use GitHub issues on the translation repository to track issues
related to translation. We could also do this with Assembla, but no one has
ever used this system and many people are already familiar with GitHub
issues because of NVDA.
5. Certain changes/problems related to the add-ons website require the site
to be rebuilt. With svn, this takes quite a long time and can be error
prone. This would be much faster with git.
Concerns/open questions:
1. I'm not sure we can switch without requiring everyone to checkout the
repository from scratch. I suspect the usernames in the commits will
change, so the commits will be different.
2. The usernames between Assembla and GitHub will be different. This may
result in older commits having different usernames to newer commits. We
could make this consistent with a precise map of Assembla usernames to
email addresses, but we don't have such a precise map.
3. The transition involves every single translator making changes, simple
as they might be, in order to continue work. It's not possible to have some
users using Assembla until they have time to transition. Once we make the
switch, everyone needs to use GitHub from then on.
4. If we can't find a way to map from git commit identifiers to svn
revision numbers (and my research so far suggests this is not possible),
some translators maybe confused/put off by git commit identifiers in commit
emails.
I'd very much appreciate your thoughts, questions, concerns, etc.
Thanks!
Jamie
