[Monotone-devel] Re: Certificates for files

[Bruce Stephens]

Thomas Haas <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

> I intended to make use monotone's wonderful concept of certificates
> for making statements about reviews and sign-offs, e.g. during the
> release process: a file, e.g. the readme, gets reviewed and
> signed-off for a release. The review and approval is recorded using
> a certificate.
>
> The certificate states, that a given revision of a file has been
> reviewed or signed-off for inclusion in a given release. Such a
> statement is not valid for the whole tree, but only for the revision
> of a file or set of files.

But you don't want to certify that the particular contents have been
signed off for all time.  For example, a README for a release now
isn't likely to be appropriate for a release next year.  

So I think it would work just as well to attach certificates to a
revision, wouldn't it?  The certificate would say "README has been
checked" or something, and that would refer to the README as indicated
by the manifest for that revision.  Attaching certs to a revision also
makes it easy to find all such certs for that revision.

(Of course, that would tie the certs specifically to that revision, so
when you commit another revision you'd have to recertify things, but
that's presumably what you'd want.)