[Monotone-devel] Personal/Project/MtnSummit Introduction

[Philipp Gröschler]

Greetings!

The subject is 'Introduction' and after crashing into the mailing list a 
few days ago I think that wouldn't hurt.

**Personal**

I have been following the list and the development of monotone for a few 
months now, and since the beginning of this year, me and a colleague are 
using monotone actively, mainly for concurrent development, storing 
source codes, project workspaces and the like.

In the past I have been using CVS and was often disappointed at its 
missing features and circumstantial administration. After comparing a 
few version control systems and relatively early considering monotone, I 
was impressed by its ease of use, setup and the modern approaches.

**Project**

After not having even the slightest clue of Python and a very long night 
of unsuccessfully muddling around with Lighttpd, Apache and various 
plugins for getting ViewMTN running, I thought that a small viewing 
application based on PHP couldn't be that much of a problem. That 
thought lasted exactly to the point at which I had to understand the 
database structure of monotone, which I obviously didn't.

The recent discussions on the new URL features have made it rather 
exciting for me to follow the further development, since that one would 
be of great help for reaching the goals of my little project rather 
early. And also without messing around directly with the database, thus 
avoiding problems like locking.

Perhaps such a project isn't even desired because ViewMTN is considered 
to be enough of a web viewer. But if it is, maybe the work on this could 
be brought forward on the summit, which leads us to the next chapter:

**MtnSummit**

I had a little chat with Thomas Keller, wiping out my last doubts about 
the summit in Wuppertal, and now I am looking forward to meeting some of 
the people behind this great project and possibly learning more about 
it, mostly the advanced ranges of application. Maybe you have already 
seen my note in the Wiki.

For your information: most of my time I am coding with Java or PHP, so 
the parts where I can help seem to be the Eclipse plugin, my own web 
viewer (if that one is welcome, see above) or the more general areas 
like documentation etc. Just to let you know in advance.

That's about it! Now I could use a snack ;-) I am staying on IRC this 
evening, so if there are questions or suggestions, feel free to contact 
me. Last remark, since I am not a native speaker, it could take some 
time to get an answer from me. Now a snack, really!

Best wishes,

Philipp