Re: GSoC 2010: "Integrated Web Client for git" proposal

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 23, 2010, 09:44 UTC
Message-ID: <7vsk6mzeny.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20100423071014.GL3563@machine.or.cz>

Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> writes:

>   The original idea was to just have a git-gui replacement that runs
> within your browser, and that's what is getting implemented I think.

Ok.

>   I think WebDAV API would be very fine to have *in addition* to
> user-friendly web interface, but is useful in very different scenarios.
> You need something to frontend WebDAV anyway.

There are different "useful" projects that can happen in this area:

 - a project to create a general front-end to versioned WebDAV; or

 - a project to serve git repository to such front-end implementations; or

 - a project to build an ad-hoc "git only" system.

The first one doesn't have to be within the purview of the "git" project per-se, and it can presumably work against anybody's versioned WebDAV server implementation (e.g. RFC 3253).

The second one would be to build one such server. It would be quite specific to, hence suitable to be supported by, the "git" project.

The third? It may look like a simplest way to get a working system, but I see at least two downsides:

 - designing server-side working tree right is not trivial.  I don't know
   if existing proposed standard matches the semantics git users expect
   from the versioning system well, but I would expect that it would be a
   far better starting point to use than coming up with a random ad-hoc
   semantics in a hurry.

 - in the end, the users will be tied to one implementation of the server
   and the client (they are pretty much the same single ball of wax under
   the current proposal, no?).

You can punt by choosing not to do a per-client server-side working tree and reduce the problem complexity somewhat, but at that point we will be looking at a single-user ad-hoc system; it doesn't interest me very much, personally [*1*].

[Footnote]

*1* It doesn't necessarily mean I'd vote the proposal down (git is not my personal project)---it just means I wouldn't vote _for_ it.