[darcs-users] Re: peer to peer darcs

[Eric S. Johansson]

Andrew Pimlott wrote:
> 
> Anyhow, on today's internet, you probably don't have to worry about
> people getting so far out of sync that this is really an issue.  Or am I
> wrong?

I think you are overly optimistic.  Today's Internet is mostly broken 
into consume only notes and a few producers.  For peer-to-peer 
operations, you need end-to-end completeness and that just isn't happening.

Bass assumption for distributed darcs should be:

Consume only connection
ability to serve *only* files by HTTP on "not under your control" server
pop 3 e-mail inbound/SMTP outbound.

the two modes of operations for repository owners that I think makes 
sense are change-test-release and changes visible on check-in.  In 
either case you have a discrete trigger event which can be used to 
replicate information or communicate to other members of a group.

instead of hardwiring a particular solution of how to propagate 
information that creates a trigger event, I would like to see the 
ability to call an external function/program in response to the trigger 
event.  Some supplied responses could be wrappers for FTP, rsync or mail 
to handle propagation of data.  for example the FTP or rsync wrappers 
could push data to a web site where others could then see the repository.

from the consumer side, maybe it's just my style but I can't see getting 
automatic updates except as e-mail notices saying that something changed 
with enough information so I could decide whether or not to pull the 
changes.

again personally, sending changes by SMTP doesn't really fit with my 
development style so I can't evaluate whether or not its useful. 
Apparently it works for some and I'm glad it does.

---eric