Re: distributed revision control?

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:12:38 -0700, knubee <knubee@gmail.com> wrote:
> A colleague and I want to work on some shared documents via tramp and
> revision control. The issue: we do not have access to a shared
> location that could serve as a centralized repository. (Our project
> isn't an open source software project and doesn't warrant such things
> as sourceforge etc. We tried google projects but couldn't see a way to
> integrate this with emacs version control.)
>
> Reading about "distributed revision control systems" (DRCS) suggests
> this may be the way to go. However, most of the information we have
> found suggests that although individuals can work independently on
> their local versions, there is an assumption that at some point
> changes are committed to a single repository.
>
> The model we would like to pursue is that the local version of one of
> us exists as the main repository. So, one approach is" "committing" to
> that repository would take the form of something more like email than
> ftp/ssh access to a machine with a repository. (We are also open to
> other approaches)

What sort of `other approaches' do you have in mind?

I'm using Mercurial[1] for a while now, and it seems to fix the bill of
what you want to do:

  [1] http://www.selenic.com/mercurial

  * It is distributed, which makes collaboration between two or more
    developers pretty easy and cool, without the need for a central, One
    True Repository(TM)

  * It supports pushing and pulling changes over HTTP, SSH, or through a
    "bundle" format

  * It supports exporting patches to email

  * It includes an extension which can easily email `patch bombs',
    collections of patches which can include rename, copy, or move
    operations

  * It can pull patches out of email messages, and import them in a
    workspace

There is a vc-hg.el module for GNU Emacs 22.X now, which can handle
local Mercurial workspaces, but I'm not sure how well Emcas and VC can
integrate with "pushing" or "pulling" changes, or "merging heads" and
the more elaborate things one can do with a distributed SCM now.

> Does anyone here know if Arch or Bazaar-NG (or something else we could
> use from within emacs) support such a model? If so, any pointers to
> how to do this?

I'm not sure if I understood _correctly_ what you want to do, but if the
generic reply above doesn't contain useful bits, please feel free to
clarify what it is you are thinking to do with a distributed SCM and how
Emacs fits in there somewhere :-)

- Giorgos