unionmount repository etc. (was: News 2009-08-31)

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 02:30:46PM +0300, Sergiu Ivanov wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 06, 2009 at 12:20:11PM +0200, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:

> However, I'd say that we somehow failed to discuss how exactly to make
> the code public :-(

Actually, we did discuss it. We agreed that it is fine for now to have a
unionmount branch in the main unionfs repository -- though ultimately I
want to see both as part of the main Hurd tree...

However, only approved patches should go into the main unionmount
branch. So what to do with those that still need review/fixing? Usually
each such patch series would go into a topic branch in a personal
repository. Unfortunately Savannah doesn't offer personal repositories;
so this leaves us with two options: putting the topic branches in the
main repository as well; or putting them in some other repository, e.g.
on gitorious...

BTW, aren't you supposed to upload your code to some Google server?...

(Not saying that this is a good way to make it available; but at least
it should be public in a way...)

> OTOH, I could push my repository to something like github.

As I said before, github has nasty terms of use; I'd rather we get rid
of it. Gitorious supposedly has nicer ones -- though I haven't checked
myself...

> > So we'll have the option of showing an XML file as filesystem
> > hierarchy at some time via a simple ls blah.xml,,xml2dir? 
> > 
> > (or at least the option to do so, once we have the corresponding
> > xml2dir translator)
> 
> One can actually do that now already.  Just give me the xml2dir
> translator :-)

There is an xmlfs in hurd-extras. Don't know in what state it is.

> I'm rather inclined to consider that shipping unionfs and nsmux with
> LiveCDs and QEMU images is not an imperative to encourage their
> testing.  Potential users could just as well download the code or
> clone the repositories locally.

Yes, they could. But it's a *considerable* barrier. In practice, it
simply means that hardly anybody will do it, so it's left to rot -- just
like all the stuff in hurd-extras...

> Note that as opposed to some other translators (like Zheng's
> eth-multiplexer), both unionfs and nsmux were designed to be
> stand-alone,

...which is the reason why I still haven't tested nsmux -- I'm still
waiting for you to integrate it in the Hurd tree, as I requested again
and again.

I'm well aware that tschwinge doesn't like it; but that shouldn't stop
us from doing it on a branch -- or as a last resort, in a personal
repository...

-antrik-