GitMinutes #41: Stefan Beller and J. Wyman (Git Merge 2017)

We are (temporarily) back after a long hiatus! What triggers this action is Git Merge 2017 that took place in Brussels back in February. This is the first of multiple episodes from the conference.

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First up is Stefan Beller of Google. He is a Git core contributor who has recently been picking up git-submodules to bring them back into shape. We'll hear about his current work on that. It's not the first time Stefan is on the podcast, back in 2015 he spoke about improving the Git protocol.

GitMinutes recording setup in the mysterious "up-side-down room".

Second guest of the day is J Wyman from Microsoft. There's been quite some development on Windows and in Visual Studio since I last had them on the podcast (Martin Woodward in 2013, and Jameson Miller in 2015) now J gives us a well-needed update.

Episode outline:

00:00:00 Intro 
00:02:22 Submodules at the contributors' summit? 
00:03:07 Why do people hate on submodules so much? 
00:04:12 Aren't submodules done and ready? 
00:05:25 What is the difference to other multi-repo handlers? 
00:06:59 Plan for the future? 
00:07:52 Welcome J Wyman 
00:08:17 What were the highlights from the contributors' summit? 
00:08:54 What do you do at Microsoft? 
00:10:22 What are the issues with switching away from libgit2? 
00:11:21 Are you still using libgit2 anywhere? 
00:13:10 How do you use core Git? 
00:14:16 Which of the discussed Git improvements are most interesting? 
00:15:07 Who contributes to Git from Microsoft? 
00:16:18 Anything else I should ask you about? 
00:17:43 Outro

Intro script:

As you may or may not know, during the Git Merge conference, which is sort of a user-oriented happening, there is a less known event taking place called the Git Contributor Summit, where many of the contributors to Git itself get together to talk core development, face to face. This is a gold mine for GitMinutes interviews, and this is the third Git-Merge I’ve gone to with my wife’s trusty singstar microphones.
I got a total of 8 interviews, and it’s all top-notch quality talk with core contributors and people with some really hefty ideas on how to bring Git forward in the years to come. AGAIN Git Merge was a place to talk about scaling Git, but we also discussed how to get more diverse contributions into Git itself, and how to advance the current world state of discussions and reviews *around* commits. You’ll hear more about that in the coming episodes. 

For the first of the two interviews in this episode, I grabbed Stefan Beller from Google. He is a seasoned Git-Merge participant and core contributor. You may remember that I interviewed him two years ago. At the contributor summit this year he brought up one of the most hated (and perhaps also most loved) parts of Git itself: submodules!

After that I talk to J Wyman from Microsoft about how they are now actually using the full Git core from within Visual Studio, among many interesting things he has to report from Redmond.