Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: Certificates for files

[Thomas Haas]

Bruce Stephens wrote:
> Thomas Haas <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
> 
>>As mentioned in my initial posting I consider this a work-around.
>>However, if certs only exit for revisions (And not for files) it is
>>the way to go.
> 
> 
> Probably I'm misunderstand what you're trying to do.  The closest I
> can get is that you want to say something about a specific version of
> a file in the context of a revision (perhaps more generally: a
> specific version of a file for a branch, or for a "release" indicated
> in some way).  
> 
> I wouldn't have thought it would be useful to mark a version of a file
> (actually as Nathaniel commented, the contents of the file, which
> doesn't include its name or anything) without connecting that to
> something else.  And if the "something else" can be a revision, then
> you could use a revision cert.
> 
> Overall I'm not sure why using a revision cert is a workaround rather
> than the right thing to use.  For checking a release, you can look at
> the certs attached to the revision and make sure they're all there,
> for example.
> 
> I could imagine you might want to attach a cert to a particular file
> (you might want to make "README" as a file that needs a specific kind
> of check before making a release).  What used to be file certs don't
> seem right for that.  
> 
> Technically I imagine that would be possible, if files have a
> permanent identity as proposed by Nathaniel recently, it might be
> possible to expose that sufficiently to attach certs to them.  File
> attrs could be done like that, I guess?  On the other hand, you'd
> probably want them to be versionable, so that wouldn't work well.
> 
> How about using file attributes for what you want, rather than certs?

Thanks for your comments.

Actually. you and Nathaniel are right: the certificates I would like to
use make a statement about a specific revision of a file. As there is no
notion of a revision of a file (only revision of a tree), it does not
seem right to me to use the existing certificates for my purpose --
although technically possible.

Thanks for your help and support.

Regards
- tom