Re: [Gnu-arch-users] revc

[Thomas Lord]

Hi!

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.

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

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).

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

-t



Laurent Wandrebeck wrote:

2008/3/26, Andy Tai <address@hidden>:
  

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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