Why we use Git for Brightcove video module

Our development of Brightcove module is steadily progressing and I thought it would be useful to explain a bit about our development processes. For version control we use Git on all of our internal projects, so for Brightcove we decided to utilize this same tool with just a small change - using github.com instead our own private repositories.

Why Git?

At Dynamite Heads, we started few years ago with using minimal software version control (mostly CVS since drupal.org was using it), then progressed through Subversion to Bazaar and finally have adopted Git. The experience is always a little bit different with every system but only Git (with helper applications) provides all the functionality we need and provides it the way we want it - easy repository management with detailed brnach level access control for contributors and advanced branching workflow.

Unlike Bazaar and SVN, Git's branching model is an integral part of the natural development workflow - once mastered it really provides a lot of benefits. There is a great description of a common Git branching model at nvie.com, check it out. Its very similar to the one we use ourselves.

The Drupal community has recently made the decision to move the entire drupal.org infrastructure to Git, further supporting the decision to use Git for our software develpment.

Git for Brightcove Video

Since the Brightcove module will be publicly available on drupal.org under the GPL license, we decided to make all stages of development publicly accessible by hosting the repositories on github.com. Clone the repository and you can follow our progress developing the module and even make your own suggestions and contributions. You'll find it at Github - Brightcove Drupal.

There is of course the issue that Drupal.org still uses the old CVS repository, we'll also be pushing incremental releases to drupal.org during the development process.

Current status

While we're actually just at the beginning fo the development phase, the module is already in a very usable state. Try it out if you have a Brightcove account and let us know what you think! We will post a demo video of our progress next week, demonstrating what has been done and what is left. Stay tuned, more to come soon.