Re: Git drawbacks?

[Dmitry Potapov <dpotapov@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 08:31:48AM +0000, Dmitry Smirnov wrote:
> Dmitry Potapov <dpotapov <at> gmail.com> writes:
>  
> > Yes, but then I do not see any reason to do any time consuming building
> > and testing in the working tree. I create a snapshot of the interesting
> > version using 'git archive' and then run build&test on it... In this
> > way, I can make sure that the archive I deliver is tested properly. If
> > you do your testing in the working tree, sometimes uncommitted or some
> > other files that are left over from previous builds may affect result.
> > So, if it takes considerable time anyhow, why do not do clean build and
> > test? And if you worry about compilation time, you can use ccache.
> 
> It is not clear for me. Yes, I have to get some fixed version to reproduce
> the bug reported by someone. Then I need to fix it and commit the change 
> back (on the head). Also, it is obvious to reproduce the issue and 
> test the fix on the tip. Can do this with 'git archive'?
> BTW, doesn't 'git archive' sync to some version that I probably already 
> have in other clone? ;-)

I am not sure I understood your question. What 'git archive' does is to
create a tar or zip archive or any version that you specify. So, you can
use it to export the snapshot of any version to a temporary directory
for testing if this testing takes a noticeable time and you want to be
able to work on something else in meanwhile. If necessary, you can
create a temporary branch starting at the intesting point and to add
some commits there (such as a new test case to reproduce the problem)
and then run test on it. Later, you can either rebase or merge these
commits to any branch that needs them.

Actually, when someone reports a problem, I do not use 'git archive'
because I write a test case for this bug and run it alone, and it does
not take much time to run it. But periodically (a few times a day), I
run the full test suit, which takes considerable amount of time, so I
run this test outside of my working directory, using 'git archive'.


Dmitry