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

[Bruce Stephens]

Nathaniel Smith <address@hidden> writes:

> 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...)

Presumably we want things like monotone-viz to be possible.  Currently
I think that works by accessing the database directly (without using
any of monotone).  That means it needs changing whenever the database
schema changes, which is undesirable, although presumably it'll become
less of a problem as things mature.

So how should things like monotone-viz work (also things that modify
the database, of course, which monotone-viz doesn't)?  What might they
need from monotone that it doesn't provide now?