Re: [Gnu-arch-users] "virtual" archives in arch

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Mirian Crzig Lennox <address@hidden>

    > In perusing the archive*.[ch] and pfs*.[ch] code in libarch, I've
    > noticed that access to archives is done through a lovely object
    > oriented interface, with implementation-specific details abstracted
    > behind vtable structures.  This seems to have been done primarily to
    > support different file-transfer mechanisms (ftp, sftp, dav, etc.), but
    > I wonder how difficult it would be to extend the metaphor to include
    > archives other than the "standard" Arch layout.

That's largely what it's there for.


    > My idea is to create a virtual archive which speaks "pserver" protocol
    > to a remote CVS server, 

As others have pointed out, and especially if you mean to _also_ use
the CVS repository as an ordinary CVS repository, it will be a
difficult fit _at_best_ (and more likely not possible at all).


    > It would map the CVS
    > semantics understood by the remote pserver to the Arch semantics used
    > by tla, using heuristics such as are employed by cvsps and/or cscvs to
    > fill in the cracks.
    [....]

    > I'm curious whether Tom and others think this would be a worthwhile
    > goal; and if so, whether the vtable framework would support doing what
    > I have describes.

Other people have approached the same problem in a slightly different
way -- in fact that's the origin of some of the CVS tools.   You might
find it simpler to set up a "gateway" that propogates changes back and
forth between a separate arch archive and CVS repository, handling
just the special case patch flows you need.    There's little to be
gained and probably insurmountable amounts of complexity involved in
trying to map arch directly onto CVS (and vice versa).

-t