Nabble - Gnu - Arch - Users

/user programmable web service/

 Yes.  I'm interested.   Excuse me, briefly, while I core dump
 at you:

 There are some very good ideas in Arch that are being lost.

Could you sum them up ? I'm not good enough with tla so it's clear to me.

 I have a pretty decent (not perfected, just "actionable") idea of
 what Arch 2.0 should be and how revc fits in.

Is there any written form ?

 I have some new ideas, too.   Among them, first hints of how to
 build-in distributed, decentralized revision control at the storage
 level: make it part of what users see as the "file system".   Also,
 beginning to *seriously* think of ways to (a) integrate source code
 revision control deeply into apps such as IDEs (e.g., "patches to
 functions, not files")  (b) handle other media types (e.g., a
 word-processor document).

About the file system point, do you mean something like a commit would
be like a snapshot at the FS level ? a branch a snapshot copy in
another volume and such ? So that Arch 2.0/revc would be somewhere
some kind of reiser4+zfs generation 2 ? Or did I completely miss the
point ? :)

 There's some "thesis" kind of work to be done, too.   I mean
 a "writing up" of things.   Over the past couple of months I've
 watched perhaps a dozen or so good programmers, on two mailing
 lists, try to make complex decisions about revision control.  In
 both conversations, people wanted to summarize and compare various
 systems.   They were trying to construct "taxonomies" of features
 of the design space, etc.    And, while, yes... good programmers ...
 that discussion was lame.   There should (or should 'a been) a
 carefully written Arch paper aimed at bringing some lucidity to
 the current dialog.

You're right. revision control system is a so complex domain that a
couple years of dedicated work would be welcome. Unfortunately, I'm
afraid most (every?) programmers can't afford enough time purely on
research.

 The "something else" projects that I'm working on aren't entirely
 Arch-irrelevant either.  Those are also "distributed, decentralized"
 systems with persistent stores and collaborative work on documents,
 etc.    So, Arch stuff should come up in those projects too -- it's just
 not the highest priority right now.

I've taken a quick look at flower, and I *think* I understand the link
with Arch. That project is pretty ambitious and sounds quite
appealing. but, in my humble opinion of revision control systems
newbie, is it a good idea to work on the "upper" level instead of the
base, the revision control system itself ? That said, we may just have
a different pov on dev: i tend to write down basic gears first, then
"high level" functions, you sound like working the other way :) And I
must admit I don't know which method is the best.
I won't do another step, or we'll fall into philosophy ;)

 I stopped working on Arch 2.0 for the very simple and necessary
 reason that I could not afford to continue it (and still can't).

 It's not *good* that 1.x has fallen aside as it has but it could
 turn out to be *convenient* if work on 2.0 were to happen, just
 because the 2.0 project would retain all the wisdom of the 1.x
 experience, but shed any pressing need for exact upwards compatibility.
 (Can "less users" be good for a project? :-)

 If someone wants to work on Arch 2.0, and is experienced enough
 to collaborate with me, and has bandwidth to do the bulk of the
 heavy lifting....  I'll help as I can.

I'd be interested in working on Arch 2.0, because revision control
systems are intellectually interesting to work on. But I'am a
*complete* beginner in it.
bw shouldn't be much of a problem (adsl 2+ at home 1.3MB/s download,
100KB/sec upload - no cap), and I rent a mutualised server (900MB disk
space, 600GB bw/month, http, ftp).

 Heck, an optional Flower-based (basiscraft.com) "smart server"
 for Arch 2.0 could be very interesting.

Agreed. I don't want to sound harsh, but, from a purely technical pov:
XML will be a problem one day of another, because of speed
Yum (the package manager), was using XML and switched to sqlite, and
is much snappier now.
I'm sure there are other examples. I don't know of any XML use in
heavy computation environment. But, well, I guess you have really good
reasons to have chosen that technology. (btw, I work as SA/dev/you
name it in a physics lab - satellite images processing and other
"light" tasks - and I swear no one ever proposed XML;))

 But... the main problem is resources.   I can't afford to work on it.
 I don't like how public projects so often wind up wasting the time
 of everyone involved (to some third party's benefit).   I don't like
 the way "inner circles" of bordering-on-success projects like Arch
 turn into pitched-battle power plays and back stabbing.   I see no
 point to the paradigm of project mgt. Arch 1.x was born under.

I completely dislike too the way things went with tla/bazaar. I guess
such things unfortunately happen. Hopefully, most free projects evolve
nicely.

 So, no, there are no active plans for furthering Arch 2.0 even
 though, technically, it's an attractive idea.   Any ideas about making
 it practical for everyone are welcome.

We'd first need some docs with things to do, path to follow, technical
description of data formats etc. And, some devs much more experienced
in revision control systems than I :-).
Regards,
Laurent

> What's the way to help you so you can try to work a little bit on revc/arch 2 ?
> I've checked gnuarch website but can't find paypal link or something.
> I hope my mail sent on the ml isn't too dumb, but it's not always easy
> to be clearly understood, as french is my main laguage and not english
> :)

My paypal address is lord@...

If I knew a way to raise about $5K to deliver a "study" -- an informal
Arch 2.0 plan -- that could make some sense from my perspective.
The deliverable for that funding is a document (probably in the form
of web pages).   The goal is to make something that sums up some key
elements of my perspective on revctl and that lays out an actionable 
plan for doing it.

-t

2008/3/26, Andy Tai atai@...:

Thank you for locating the Arch 2.0 prototype.  It should be of interest,
historically at least.

You're welcome.
After a bit of reading about GNU/Arch, it seems clear that this
wonderful piece of software is falling into oblivion :-(
Tom is interested by something else, some devs left for bazaar, some
went to git etc etc, and even the FSF is advocating for bazaar-ng.
I don't think that tla 1.x is going to see a lot more dev, and revc
hasn't (yet?) seen someone continuing the path opened by Tom.
Is there somewhere any official position on tla's future ? Is there
someone interested in its (revc) revival ?
Regards,
Laurent

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Nabble - Gnu - Arch - Users

tla: file descriptor leak, causes panic when removing temporary directory

Re: please look into gittorrent

Re: please look into gittorrent

Re: please look into gittorrent

please look into gittorrent

Re: Inclusion of Bzr into the GNU system

Inclusion of Bzr into the GNU system

Re: Inclusion of Bzr into the GNU system

Re: Inclusion of Bzr into the GNU system

Inclusion of Bzr into the GNU system

Re: botched invariant pest

botched invariant pest

Re: GNU Arch intro in russian

GNU Arch intro in russian

Fwd: Bazaar becomes a GNU project

rev. ctl and file systems

Re: revc

Re: revc

Re: revc

Re: revc

Re: revc

Re: revc

Re: revc

Re: revc

Re: revc

revc

Re: Need to version control entire root file system

dear colleagues

Re: Re: Announcing Flower 0.5

Re: Announcing Flower 0.5

Announcing Flower 0.5

Re: references to seyza.com