[Monotone-devel] trac-like systems for monotone

[William Uther]

Hi,
  So in going down my list of itches, I came to "I want something  
Trac-like".  Being initially thwarted by the fact that the monotone- 
Trac plugin website seems to have gone down (I know, it's committed  
as a branch to the main repo, but I didn't remember that at the  
time), I went looking for other options.

  This then is a rambling email about what I found and what the  
problems were.  It is a rough "state of things" email.

  The first things that I came across this:  http://twiki.org/cgi- 
bin/view/Plugins/MercurialContrib

  Simply put, TWiki normally stores all its data in plain text  
files.  It handles versioning using rcs.  The above plugin replaces  
rcs with mercurial.  The result is that you can run TWiki in multiple  
places and synchronise them all.  It doesn't look that hard to  
convert the plugin to use monotone instead.

  There are also things like bug-tracker plugins for twiki.  So  
there's at least one round-about way to get a distributed bug tracker.

  There are some issues with going this route though:
    - twiki is fairly heavyweight, and although it can be made  
distributed, it is designed to be run on a central server, not by  
each user.
    - twiki needs a web server.  Jetty works, but this adds to the  
weight.
    - The end result is missing branch/revision/diff browsing and  
log browsing

  One could take something like ViewMTN and integrate it with TWiki  
(one of the features I like about Trac is that you can use wiki  
markup in commit messages and it works).  That isn't going to make  
the whole system lighter weight...

  Or you could take something like Guitone and add a simple  
hypertext system to it, using mtn as the backing store.  That would  
be well-suited to running on the end-user's system.  It would mean  
implementing yet another hypertext system and bug tracking system,  
and you'd lose the easy way to have them web accessible.

  So then I looked at what others do:
    - Monotone development itself doesn't use a bug tracking system  
(although there seems to be some tests that are there solely as bug  
markers).
    - Pidgin uses Trac for the wiki and bug tracking, and ViewMTN  
for the source view.  They are able to close tickets in commit  
messages, but the text in ViewMTN doesn't link to the tickets or  
other wiki entries.
    - OpenEmbedded use BugZilla, a generic wiki, ViewMTN, and a  
generic file browser pointed at a monotone working copy.

  Has anyone tried making twiki distributed?  Did it work?

e.g. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version- 
control.monotone.devel/6044

Cheers,

Will          :-}