Re: [Monotone-devel] Is there something like libmonotone?

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 01:01:56PM -0600, Matthew A. Nicholson wrote:
> Andreas K?nner wrote:
> >is there something like libmonotone? Just in case someone want to write 
> >a  GUI on top of monotone...
> 
> I don't think there is a libmonotone, but there should be...

This is actually a matter of debate :-) In particular, graydon has
pointed out that you really _want_ monotone to be a monolithic program
with an extremely limited and well-defined interface to the rest of
the world, because monotone is the only program we trust to manage
your database without screwing things up.  (we have enough trouble
making sure monotone won't screw things up in the first place...)

This does leave open the possibility of wrapping a library around it,
with some carefully designed interface, but since this interface
wouldn't be much lower-level than the current command-line interface,
and since the command-line interface is accessible from all languages
(not just C++), my suggestion would be to improve the command-line
interface's support for automation.

There's definitely a lot that could happen to make monotone more
scriptable, and I think we definitely should; I figure the best way to
accomplish that is to wait for people who want to script monotone,
then extend it in whatever ways they turn out to need...

-- Nathaniel

-- 
  /* Tell the world that we're going to be the grim
   * reaper of innocent orphaned children.
   */
-- Linux kernel 2.4.5, main.c