[Monotone-devel] temporary attributes, cvssync (was Re: What are rosters)

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 09:01:48AM +0100, Christof Petig wrote:
> The only additional feature I missed when I developed cvssync was to
> attach a file (or some sort of long text) to an already existing
> revision. So if you'd ever come near to think about a feature like that
> it would greatly help cvssync. [At the moment I use a fragile delta
> encoded certificate chain to store cvs revisions and keyword expansion]

Rosters don't help with that; attributes are still integrated into the
immutable hashed data.

I'm not sure what would... the cert chaining thing just doesn't feel
right, but... it seems like what we want is, umm, file attributes
that go away when a file is edited, or something.  Would that be
an elegant solution?  Does it have enough semantic justification to
integrate into monotone?  (I literally can't tell either way, it
rings both my "hmm, sensible" and "gah, are you crazy?" intuitions at
the same time.)  It would be sort of like a cleaned up file cert, but
falling on the "data" side of the big "data"/"cert" divide.

> (yes, at the moment I am more using cvssync (ten times a day on average)
> than developing it)

Cool.  I would still very much like to get it into a release so that
other people can play with it... I'm sorry I've lost track of the
status with all this roster stuff and all!  I'm guessing it won't take
a huge amount of work to convert cvssync over to rosters (graydon did
cvs_import in a few hours), but I don't know.

Random thought: perhaps someone who has done more work on mainline
would like to be deputized to shepherd cvssync in?  Since I keep not
having the time and being distracted by other things?

-- Nathaniel

-- 
"But in Middle-earth, the distinct accusative case disappeared from
the speech of the Noldor (such things happen when you are busy
fighting Orcs, Balrogs, and Dragons)."