Scheduling a repository outage

[Eric S. Raymond]

Mark has asked me to try to graft onto our repository a branch
representing NTP Classic development since the fork.

For ugly reasons that I will detail in later mail, I think this is
just barely doable, but not with conventional git operations.
It will take reposurgeon to get the job done.

That means we need to develop a protocol for doing surgery on the GitLab
repository in such a way that everyone's pending work (whether tip
changes, private branges, or merge requests) is preserved and can be
reapplied afterwards.

I don't want us to have to debug that protocol while I'm dealing with a
serious tangle - and the branch graft is a serious tangle. So I intend
to do a surgical test with low stakes first. The low stakes are "let's
fix typos in old comments without modifying code or repository topology".
That way, even if the graft attempt fails (which is possible) we'll
at least have gained *something* from the whole exercise.

Here's how I think it needs to go:

1. When you read this, push any public changes you have ready.  

2. If you have private branches, save each one as a patch sequence.
   Make note of the branch point.

3. Reply to this message telling me you're ready - especially if you
   are Gary, Matt, or Hal.

4. I will then schedule a brief repo outage for the surgery.

5. When I'm done, I'll announce it here.  At that point the following
   things will need to happen:

6. You guys restore your private branches.

7. Mark will need to re-make the signed release tags.

One of the reasons I want to do this is to find out if GitLab's issue
and merge-tracker logic is capqable of resynching itself to the new
hash sequence after surgery.  For example under issue #247 the
page says "Eric S. Raymond @esr mentioned in commit 6e45c35a a week
ago" with that commit titled

Revert "Address GitLab issue #247: Extra precision for avgint field..."

It'll be important to note what happens to this reference post-surgery.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Hoplophobia (n.): The irrational fear of weapons, correctly described by 
Freud as "a sign of emotional and sexual immaturity".  Hoplophobia, like
homophobia, is a displacement symptom; hoplophobes fear their own
"forbidden" feelings and urges to commit violence.  This would be
harmless, except that they project these feelings onto others.  The
sequelae of this neurosis include irrational and dangerous behaviors
such as passing "gun-control" laws and trashing the Constitution.