Re: [Gnu-arch-users] library locations

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Pau Aliagas <address@hidden>

    > Now that pristine trees are no longer necessary, sharing
    > libraries among developers is something I miss.

    > I know I can setup up groups and permisions to share the same
    > directories, but I'd like to register library locations like
    > archive locations, via sftp and webdav. It doesn't seem to
    > difficult and it could be very useful.

    > This is very important in companies when multiple people are
    > working on the same code, it looks like an obvious extension to
    > what we have now.

    > Any thoughts?

Revision libraries are pretty fundamentally file-system based, not
server-based.  I don't think you can do quite what you want in a
reasonable way.  (Of course, if you want, you could always try to find
a way to, for example, mount an sftp connect as a regular file
system.)

Instead, how about making a simple "whole-tree server"?  Initially,
this would have a very simple protocol (roughly):

        REQ: register-archive name location
        RPLY: ACK or NACK

        REQ: get-revision FULLY_QUALIFIED_REVISION_NAME
        REPLY: .tgz stream of that revision

        REQ: get-delta REV1 REV2
        REPLY: .tgz stream of changeset from REV1 to REV2

I could see adding support to use such servers in:

a) arch_build_revision
b) arch_library_add
c) the merge commands

Depending on network topologies and bandwidths, that could often be a
pretty good win.  For a "cold get" (get with no local revision library
entries (and sometimes even with a local archive mirror)) it would
pretty much always be a win.   It would be a nice alternative to the
idea of "summary deltas" stored in archives.

-t