Re: [Monotone-devel] beginner questions

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Sat, May 22, 2004 at 07:27:22PM +0100, Zbigniew Zag?rski wrote:
> hi all
> 
> I've installed monotone yesterday ... now I'm after reading 
> documentation, and i have some questions before i start using it more 
> widely than testing:
> 
> 1. why monotone use those ugly SHA1 signatures in *user interface* instead
>    well known revision numbers ... it's really weird ... how can i use 
> typical
>    revision numbers instead of tagging everything ? I'm asking about user
>    interface, i untersand reasons to use SHA as internal file/rev 
> identifiers.

Because of the "distributed" part of being a "distributed version
control system".  Say we're using CVSy revision numbers, and we both
check out version 1.1, and make some changes, and commit to our
separate databases.  There's no way for either of us to know about the
other, so presumably we both end up versions named "1.2", except the
actual data in them is different.  This is already confusing.  And
then the worst part is when we then try to exchange our work with each
other -- what happens?  Do I end up with two different versions called
"1.2" within my database?  Do I rename your version to 1.3, and you
rename my version to 1.3, so that now everyone has the same work but
under different names, and we can't tell each other things like "that
bug was fixed in 1.2"?  Or what?

Monotone's solution is to always use globally unique versions -- those
SHA1s.  The beauty of this is that you can be sitting with your laptop
in an airplane or whatever, and be sure that your copy of Monotone is
generating IDs that will forevermore be unique; that no matter what
you do in the future, you will be able to exchange data with anyone,
anytime.

So, basically, you can't use revision numbers; revision numbers
require that people coordinate while working, or use elaborate
namespaces (cf. Arch), or the like.  Not requiring the former is a
major feature, and we like the simplicity gained by not worrying about
the latter.

> 2. Can i serve monotone projects by SSH like CVS and BitKeeper do ?

Not right now, though this is definitely a planned feature.  A "simple
matter of programming" that no-one's gotten to yet...

> 3. What are future direction of development of monotone ? GUI/WebGUI maybe ?

That would definitely be nice.  There's some work on making a GUI
already, and a simple web GUI shouldn't actually be that hard, but
there are a lot of things to do... feel free to step in and help ;-).

-- Nathaniel

-- 
Sentience can be such a burden.