[Monotone-devel] Re: Re: Future of monotone

[Boris]

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:24:38 +0200, Markus Schiltknecht  
<address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi Boris,
>
> Boris wrote:
> > * I need a kind of project branch to put several projects into the same  
> > monotone database. I want everyone to be free to create new branches  
> > but I don't want everyone to be so free that branches which are  
> > actually different projects are mixed up. Putting every project into  
> > its own database would be possible but is too much work (eg. it  
> > requires some team members who work on several projects to synchronize  
> > several databases all day).
>
> Hm.. with proper branch names, netsync permissions and trust hooks, that  
> should be possible. Or am I missing something here?

I'm not sure what you mean. As monotone doesn't support a project concept  
I can tell everyone that some branches really mean project. But there is  
nothing which will prevent developers from creating a new branch with any  
name (and maybe a name which actually is meant to be used only for  
branches belonging to another project)?

You are right that with read-/write-permissions you can work around a bit.  
If policy branches allow fine-grained control though I understand the  
project concept is not really needed. I guess what I'm really looking for  
then is a distributed version control system with centralized permission  
settings.

> [...]
> > If it comes to GUIs I can imagine a kind of Windows shell extension  
> > which could be used by managers to synchronize a folder with a monotone  
> > server directly. While developers are in full control the problem is  
> > that everyone else is not. I could imagine a shell extension which is  
> > installed by managers. Then I send a .reg file to them which will add  
> > some entries to their Windows registry (like name of the server to  
> > synchronize with etc.). And then they are ready to go and see what  
> > their developers are actually doing all day. If it was possible to  
> > develop shell extensions in .NET I would have tried that quickly. But  
> > as Microsoft doesn't recommend it I didn't have any time yet to come up  
> > with some C++ code.
>
> Just today I've stumbled across tortoise/hg. Maybe we could hang on and  
> add monotone support there?

Ah, not bad! Yes, something like this might help to add more users to  
monotone. Developers typically don't seem to have any problems at all. If  
it comes to web designers who want to work on HTML pages or even managers  
I can't really tell them to use command-line commands. They don't need a  
fancy GUI really which is a lot of work to create and maintain. It's just  
the opposite: The less buttons the better. :)

Boris