distributed revision control?

distributed revision control?

[knubee]

A colleague and I want to work on some shared documents via tramp and
revision control. The issue: we do not have access to a shared
location that could serve as a centralized repository. (Our project
isn't an open source software project and doesn't warrant such things
as sourceforge etc. We tried google projects but couldn't see a way to
integrate this with emacs version control.)

Reading about "distributed revision control systems" (DRCS) suggests
this may be the way to go. However, most of the information we have
found suggests that although individuals can work independently on
their local versions, there is an assumption that at some point
changes are committed to a single repository.

The model we would like to pursue is that the local version of one of
us exists as the main repository. So, one approach is" "committing" to
that repository would take the form of something more like email than
ftp/ssh access to a machine with a repository. (We are also open to
other approaches)

Does anyone here know if Arch or Bazaar-NG (or something else we could
use from within emacs) support such a model? If so, any pointers to
how to do this?

(Sorry if this post is off topic. If there is a more appropriate list
that deals with revision control systems available within emacs,
please let me know.)

thanks.

Re: distributed revision control?

[Pascal Bourguignon]

knubee <knubee@gmail.com> writes:

> A colleague and I want to work on some shared documents via tramp and
> revision control. The issue: we do not have access to a shared
> location that could serve as a centralized repository. (Our project
> isn't an open source software project and doesn't warrant such things
> as sourceforge etc. We tried google projects but couldn't see a way to
> integrate this with emacs version control.)
>
> Reading about "distributed revision control systems" (DRCS) suggests
> this may be the way to go. However, most of the information we have
> found suggests that although individuals can work independently on
> their local versions, there is an assumption that at some point
> changes are committed to a single repository.
>
> The model we would like to pursue is that the local version of one of
> us exists as the main repository. So, one approach is" "committing" to
> that repository would take the form of something more like email than
> ftp/ssh access to a machine with a repository. (We are also open to
> other approaches)
>
> Does anyone here know if Arch or Bazaar-NG (or something else we could
> use from within emacs) support such a model? If so, any pointers to
> how to do this?
>
> (Sorry if this post is off topic. If there is a more appropriate list
> that deals with revision control systems available within emacs,
> please let me know.)
>
> thanks.
>

darcs is designed to deal with this problem.  Technically, there is no
central repository in darcs, all the sandboxes are branches.

Changes are not commited to any central repository, but at one point,
you may want to send your patches to the other guys, and vice versa.
If you're only two, it's ok; if you're more, it's easier if there is a
single central integrator.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT: In the unlikely event that this
merchandise should contact antimatter in any form, a catastrophic
explosion will result.

Re: distributed revision control?

[knubee]

> darcs is designed to deal with this problem.

Ah, ok, thanks for the tip. We'll look into it.

Re: distributed revision control?

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:12:38 -0700, knubee <knubee@gmail.com> wrote:
> A colleague and I want to work on some shared documents via tramp and
> revision control. The issue: we do not have access to a shared
> location that could serve as a centralized repository. (Our project
> isn't an open source software project and doesn't warrant such things
> as sourceforge etc. We tried google projects but couldn't see a way to
> integrate this with emacs version control.)
>
> Reading about "distributed revision control systems" (DRCS) suggests
> this may be the way to go. However, most of the information we have
> found suggests that although individuals can work independently on
> their local versions, there is an assumption that at some point
> changes are committed to a single repository.
>
> The model we would like to pursue is that the local version of one of
> us exists as the main repository. So, one approach is" "committing" to
> that repository would take the form of something more like email than
> ftp/ssh access to a machine with a repository. (We are also open to
> other approaches)

What sort of `other approaches' do you have in mind?

I'm using Mercurial[1] for a while now, and it seems to fix the bill of
what you want to do:

  [1] http://www.selenic.com/mercurial

  * It is distributed, which makes collaboration between two or more
    developers pretty easy and cool, without the need for a central, One
    True Repository(TM)

  * It supports pushing and pulling changes over HTTP, SSH, or through a
    "bundle" format

  * It supports exporting patches to email

  * It includes an extension which can easily email `patch bombs',
    collections of patches which can include rename, copy, or move
    operations

  * It can pull patches out of email messages, and import them in a
    workspace

There is a vc-hg.el module for GNU Emacs 22.X now, which can handle
local Mercurial workspaces, but I'm not sure how well Emcas and VC can
integrate with "pushing" or "pulling" changes, or "merging heads" and
the more elaborate things one can do with a distributed SCM now.

> Does anyone here know if Arch or Bazaar-NG (or something else we could
> use from within emacs) support such a model? If so, any pointers to
> how to do this?

I'm not sure if I understood _correctly_ what you want to do, but if the
generic reply above doesn't contain useful bits, please feel free to
clarify what it is you are thinking to do with a distributed SCM and how
Emacs fits in there somewhere :-)

- Giorgos

Re: distributed revision control?

[knubee]

> I'm not sure if I understood _correctly_ what you want to do

Yes. The part about being able to pull patches out of emails is
especially interesting. We'll also look into Mercurial. Thanks.

Re: distributed revision control?

[Edward O'Connor]

knubee@gmail.com wrote:

> The issue: we do not have access to a shared location that could serve
> as a centralized repository[...] We tried google projects but couldn't
> see a way to integrate this with emacs version control.)

Google's project hosting provides a Subversion repository for your use,
and both vc-svn and psvn provide Subversion integration in Emacs.


-- 
Edward O'Connor
hober0@gmail.com

Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.

Re: distributed revision control?

[Tim X]

Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:

> knubee <knubee@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> A colleague and I want to work on some shared documents via tramp and
>> revision control. The issue: we do not have access to a shared
>> location that could serve as a centralized repository. (Our project
>> isn't an open source software project and doesn't warrant such things
>> as sourceforge etc. We tried google projects but couldn't see a way to
>> integrate this with emacs version control.)
>>
>> Reading about "distributed revision control systems" (DRCS) suggests
>> this may be the way to go. However, most of the information we have
>> found suggests that although individuals can work independently on
>> their local versions, there is an assumption that at some point
>> changes are committed to a single repository.
>>
>> The model we would like to pursue is that the local version of one of
>> us exists as the main repository. So, one approach is" "committing" to
>> that repository would take the form of something more like email than
>> ftp/ssh access to a machine with a repository. (We are also open to
>> other approaches)
>>
>> Does anyone here know if Arch or Bazaar-NG (or something else we could
>> use from within emacs) support such a model? If so, any pointers to
>> how to do this?
>>
>> (Sorry if this post is off topic. If there is a more appropriate list
>> that deals with revision control systems available within emacs,
>> please let me know.)
>>
>> thanks.
>>
>
> darcs is designed to deal with this problem.  Technically, there is no
> central repository in darcs, all the sandboxes are branches.
>
> Changes are not commited to any central repository, but at one point,
> you may want to send your patches to the other guys, and vice versa.
> If you're only two, it's ok; if you're more, it's easier if there is a
> single central integrator.
>

darcs is a nice system and I'd recommend looking at it. Another possibility is
bazaar, which looks very straight-forward and may meet your needs. I believe
there is some support under emacs' version control system, though I think its
very very basic.

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: distributed revision control?

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null>:

| darcs is a nice system and I'd recommend looking at it. Another
| possibility is bazaar, which looks very straight-forward and may
| meet your needs.

And then there is git.  Quite different in some ways from other
version control systems, but looks sort of appealing to me.

-- 
* Harald Hanche-Olsen     <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
  when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
  -- Bertrand Russell

Re: distributed revision control?

[knubee]

> Google's project hosting provides a Subversion repository for your use,
> and both vc-svn and psvn provide Subversion integration in Emacs.

Thanks for the suggestion. This specific project involves the creation
of some documents for future publication, not code. (When we develop
code we will look into Google Code as one possible option.) So our
project would probably be better suited to Google docs, but as far as
I can tell, svn repositories are only available for Google Code
projects; files in Google docs are not accessible via svn. And
although we are open to this option, we haven't found any free hosting
for document (as opposed to code) projects that we can access via a
revision control mechanism.

Re: distributed revision control?

[Hadron]

knubee <knubee@gmail.com> writes:

>> Google's project hosting provides a Subversion repository for your use,
>> and both vc-svn and psvn provide Subversion integration in Emacs.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion. This specific project involves the creation
> of some documents for future publication, not code. (When we develop
> code we will look into Google Code as one possible option.) So our
> project would probably be better suited to Google docs, but as far as
> I can tell, svn repositories are only available for Google Code
> projects; files in Google docs are not accessible via svn. And
> although we are open to this option, we haven't found any free hosting
> for document (as opposed to code) projects that we can access via a
> revision control mechanism.
>

Why do you differentiate between "documents" and "code"?

Re: distributed revision control?

[der-mustermann]

Maybe a good starting point is http://monotone.ca. I was looking at
some distributed RCS for some time and also tried some of them and
like monotone most. There are some attempts to integrate mtn in emacs
via DVC (http://download.gna.org/dvc/, of interest if you want to use
a distributed RCS from within emacs!!!) but I dont really know how far
it has gone by now. But it has all the features one needs, like
sending new revisions by mail, good trust system, SHA1 hashes for
revision-IDs, great mailing list, rock solid, very good documentation
(most importend for me), mounthly release cycle, gui tools ...
For synchronization of two databases SSH access and mtn in path on the
remote side is sufficient. I never use any RCS  but CVS from within
emacs. Console is my prefered way to do those things though.