[Monotone-devel] Re: FreeBSD's requirements for its future VCS

[Lapo Luchini]

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Brian May wrote:
> I can think of two evil reasons:
> 
> * somebody committed data without permission and copyright owner is
> jumping up and down threatening legal action if it isn't removed
> immediately.

AFAIK, this is the case they're concerned with.

> So I suspect removing the trail my be required, but this is going to
> be evil, and potentially break past revisions - it might just about be
> better to start a new archive from scratch.
>
> Also, what happens if only one line of one file is under dispute? Or
> if the dispute is resolved and the copyright owner agrees the code can
> stay after it has already been obliterated?

I guess the two main approaches may be: "forbid a revision" or "forbid a
specific (file) version".

The first has the problem that it "breaks" the chain on hashes from the
root of the tree up to the current latest revision, but has no problems
in having the same content later on, if agreed upon.

The second forbids a file content altogether, which is kinda sensible
(is that very content which is not yours, not the fact that it is in
revision xyz together with other thousand files) and could let every
revision logic work as expected, except checkout and update would
extract the full revision "except file XYZ, because its content is
forbidden".

If the content is to be had AGAIN... (but I'd consider this even more
rare than having to forbit it in the first place!) I guess either:
a. it is a source file: changing a single char in the file (e.h.:
whitespace) can solve the problem
b. it is a binary file that must be exactly so: I guess an epoch is to
be used as last resource...

- --
Lapo Luchini
address@hidden (OpenPGP & X.509)
www.lapo.it (Jabber, ICQ, MSN)
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