Re: First web interface and service API draft

From: Petr Baudis <pasky@ucw.cz>
Date: Apr 22, 2005, 12:10 UTC
Message-ID: <20050422121009.GA7173@pasky.ji.cz>
In-Reply-To: <1114166517.3233.4.camel@localhost>

Dear diary, on Fri, Apr 22, 2005 at 12:41:56PM CEST, I got a letter where Christian Meder <chris@absolutegiganten.org> told me that...

> Hi,

Hi,

Show 10 quoted lines

> /<project>
> 
> Ok. The URI should start by stating the project name
> e.g. /linux-2.6. This does bloat the URI slightly but I don't think
> that we want to have one root namespace per git archive in the long
> run. Additionally you can always put rewriting or redirecting rules at
> the root level for additional convenience when there's an obvious
> default project.
> 
> Should provide some meta data, stats, etc. if available.

I don't think this makes much sense. I think you should just apply -p1 to all the directories, and define that there should be some / page which should contain some metadata regarding the repository you are accessing (probably branches, tags, and such).

Show 9 quoted lines

> -------
> /<project>/blob/<blob-sha1>
> /<project>/commit/<commit-sha1>
> 
> These are the easy ones: the web interface should be able to spit out
> the plain text data of a blob and a commit at these URIs. Users would
> be probably scripts and other downloads.
> Open questions:
> * Blob data should be probably binary ?

What do you mean by binary?

> * Should it be commit or changeset ? Linus seems to have changed
> nomenclature in the REAME

We call it commit everywhere but in the README. :-)

The "changeset" name is bad anyway. It is a commit of a complete tree state, diff against one of its parent commits is the set of changes.

Show 6 quoted lines

> -------
> /<project>/tree/<tree-sha1>
> 
> Tree objects are served in binary form. Primary audience are scripts,
> etc. Human beings will probably get a heart attack when they
> accidentally visit this URI.

Binary form is unusable for scripts.

Anything wrong with putting ls-tree output there?

We should also have /gitobj/<sha1> for fetching the raw git objects.

Show 7 quoted lines

> -------
> /<project>/blob/<blob-sha1>.html
> /<project>/commit/<commit-sha1>.html
> /<project>/tree/<tree-sha1>.html
> 
> A HTML version of blob, commit and tree fully linked aimed at human
> beings.

How can I imagine an "HTML version of blob"?

Show 5 quoted lines

> -------
> /<project>/tree/<tree-sha1>/diff/<ancestor-tree-sha1>/html
> 
> Non recursive HTML view of the objects which are contained in the diff
> fully linked with the individual HTML views.

Why not .html?

> -------
> /<project>/changelog/<time-spec>

I'd personally prefer /log/, but whatever.

For consistency, I'd stay with the plaintext output by default, .html if requested.

And I think abusing directories for this is bad. Query string seems much more appropriate, since this is something that changes dynamically a lot, not a permanent resource identifier.

OTOH, I'd use

	/log/<commit>

to specify what commit to start at. It just does not make sense otherwise, you would not know where to start.

I think the <commit> should follow the same or similar rules as Cogito id decoding. E.g. to get latest Linus' changelog, you'd do

	/log/linus

Show 13 quoted lines

> -------
> /<project>/changelog/<time-spec>/search/<regexp>
> 
> HTML changelog for the given <time-spec> filtered by the <regexp>.
> 
> * again plain version needed ?
> 
> ------
> /<project>/changelog/<time-spec>/search/author/<regexp>
> /<project>/changelog/<time-spec>/search/committer/<regexp>
> /<project>/changelog/<time-spec>/search/signedoffby/<regexp>
> 
> convenience wrappers for generic search restricted to these fields.

Same here. just ?author=...&committer=...&signedoffby=... etc. You can even combine several criteria.

> ------
> 
> open questions:
> * how to generate and publish additional merge information ?

I don't understand....

> * how to generate and publish tree and blob history information ? This
> is probably expensive with git.

...this either.

> * how to represent branches ? should we code up the branches in the
> project id like linux-2.6-mm or whatever ?

See above.

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
Stuff: http://pasky.or.cz/
C++: an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog. -- Steve Taylor