Re: server down?

[Colin Campbell]

On Thu, 2010-12-02 at 15:24 +0100, Francisco Vila wrote:
> 2010/12/2 Colin Campbell <address@hidden>:
> 
> 
> > One wonders whether the -devel community has looked into gittorrent:
> > http://advogato.org/article/994.html
> >
> > Given the effect of putting all the eggs in one basket, distributed git
> > seems quite interesting.
> 
> Git is already distributed and all the eggs are not in one basket. Wit
> git installed in your system, you have a repository server just like
> that in GNU.  Gittorrent just removes restrictions on a centralised
> management, which is more a political problem rather than technical.
> LilyPond, like most projects, does have a central code repository and
> a core development team: if we change that, we are talking about
> another very different project.
> 

I see your point, Francisco, but the difference is this: we have a
single server which is considered canonical; you and I have *copies* of
the repo, and we can do as we like to our local version. Others have no
knowledge of the state of our repo.  When that single point of failure,
the savannah server, goes offline, so does our definitive version of
lilypond.  The trust comes from access to a single physical version of
the source.

In a truly distributed, not just widely copied, VCS, the trust is based,
for example, on credentials: only certain people can make changes, using
some irrefutable signature. The changes are propagated in a torrent, so
the repository exists in its canonical form on many machines, any one of
which can be unavailable without compromising the whole.

cheers,

Colin
-- 
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer
and philosopher (1803-1882)