Re: [Monotone-devel] Policy branches - first steps

[Paul Crowley]

Timothy Brownawell wrote:
> > So: nothing in there to handle branch renames, or to name developers. 
>
> ...I don't see how this would be extended to handle branch renaming.
>
> A different idea that's been floating around is to have branch certs be
> (project name, random_id), and then the policy branch (probably named
> (project, null_id)) contains a {random_id => branch_name} mapping.

Yes, this is the sort of thing that policy branches will probably 
contain eventually.  However, changing over to this form of branches 
will invalidate all the certs currently floating out there and so 
introduce a Flag Day.

Monotone has a flag day coming up in any case, because of the move away 
from SHA-1.  Graydon (rightly) wants to change the certificate format; 
since that's also a flag day event that should probably be done on the 
same day.  We should move towards policy-named branches at the same time.

For that reason, I'd prefer to get policy branches in place first before 
the flag day.  I think we'll find that having them around will make the 
transition easier, because we'll be able to specify various things about 
what sorts of certs we want in the policy branches themselves.  And more 
importantly, I think that getting some experience in using policy 
branches will be absolutely invaluable in designing the next revision of 
how they work.

It may be possible to transition from this proposal to the more 
sophisticated one without breaking everything; that's one reason I've 
put everything in a "version_1" subdirectory, so we can add anything we 
need to to policy branches.
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