Re: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1885890&cid=34358134

From: Will Palmer <wmpalmer@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 29, 2010, 10:12 UTC
Message-ID: <1291025571.4262.21.camel@wpalmer.simply-domain>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTi=aCRGNtKxrPLH81H8_NvpBNOmJ-0MHgRms2a3T@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, 2010-11-27 at 21:19 +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Right, but is there an actual use case for people who are developing
> code to use something like git over p2p? Maybe I'm just being
> unimaginative, but I can't see a case where people are working on the
> same project and can't find a way to push/pull from each other using
> the existing methods. Especially since it's easy to sign up for free
> Git hosting and use something like Tor to pull/push from there. Or to
> set up your own git HTTP server on a Tor *.onion server.

To me, the use-case wouldn't be because I /can't/ use existing methods,
it's because I /don't want to/ use existing methods :)
p2p tends to imply:
 - Resume-able downloads
 - Downloads from multiple sources at the same time
 - Transparently using an alternative source if one becomes unavailable
 - Load-balancing
 - referencing/linking based on "what it is" instead of "where it is"

The reason this stuff isn't a big itch for anybody is that these problems tend to come about when cloning, which doesn't really happen that often. When there's a new release, fetching the latest release-tag /might/ bring about the same needs, though in my experience "there's a new release" generally means nothing to me, since I check if there's a new release by running "git remote update" and looking for new tags, merging with my local patches if I see a relevant one.

I'm not convinced that any of this is something which is git's job, so much as it sounds like something which could benefit from another transport layer that git can optionally tie into. Sure, these could be developed together (p2p with git in mind), but adding a giant p2p section to the git codebase sounds like bloat.

I want my version control software to use p2p concepts for efficiency. I don't want my version control software to be a p2p client any more than I want my text-editor to be a mail client.

(In case it's not clear, I am in favour of p2p ("gittorrent")-like functionality being in git)