Re: [Monotone-devel] merging branch to allow 'automate stdio' over the network

[Timothy Brownawell]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 6:37 AM, Thomas Keller <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Timothy Brownawell wrote:
>>> I think branch net.venge.monotone.tbrownaw.serve_automate.single_port
>>> is ready for merging. Instead of putting raw 'automate stdio' on the
>>> network, this encapsulates it as netcmds and keeps the same initial
>>> negotiation/authentication sequence (and the same 'bye' sequence) as
>>> netsync.
>
> What also came into my mind was this: Instead of having a command
>
>        automate remote_stdio
>
> why not have a --remote option pointing to a server which should execute
> the particular command?
>
> As far as I can see you find and execute automate commands over the
> command_id machinery, shouldn't this be possible for "normal"
> non-automate commands as well?

Automate commands get a special std::ostream to write to, while normal
commands use P() or std::cout. So while you could execute normal
commands, there's no way to capture any output.

> If we wanted to implement "ls remote_branches" now we'd probably have to
> do that as a custom lua command which itself calls into automate somehow
> - wouldn't it be nice to just say
>
>        ls branches --remote my.netsync.server
>
> or
>
>        automate stdio --remote my.netsync.server
>
> ?

For the particular case of "ls branches" there's already an "automate
branches" that can be used.

Maybe it would be worthwhile to add an "automate remote <command>
<args>" that would run a single automate command remotely and return
the raw output (without the "automate stdio" packetization)?