Re: Google Summer of Code 2009: GIT

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Mar 11, 2009, 12:58 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0903111353340.10498@intel-tinevez-2-302>
In-Reply-To: <ab9fa62a0903110511u63e7d46dr3bb783ee891ca4ae@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Wed, 11 Mar 2009, saurabh gupta wrote:

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> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Johannes Schindelin
> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 11 Mar 2009, Saurabh Gupta wrote:
> >
> > > /*About GSoC GIT ideas; */Here are the ideas which I found to be 
> > > interested in. Although, I would like to discuss any other idea than 
> > > these in GIT organization.
> > >
> > > *1) Domain specific merge helpers* Intelligence in the merger can be 
> > > put which modifies the source file according the format. Different 
> > > file formats can be put in the merger to support.
> >
> > You said that you are interested in this project, but from your mails 
> > I do not see what are the specific reasons why.
> 
> All right. May be I lacked in my mail to specify the reason for my 
> interest.

Oh, sorry, I did not mean to imply any offense...

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> The reason is that from my past experience, I got the notion that this 
> project is according to my interest and is doable in the three months 
> time period.
>
> Another reason is that I have been using the versioning tools like svn 
> and now perforce for a long time and this added up to my interest.

Sounds good!

Show 7 quoted lines

> > IMHO this project can only fly if you have a specific file format that 
> > you absolutely want to be able to merge; otherwise, it will be an 
> > uphill fight.
> 
> Well, as suggested on the wiki, I would like to work on the xml file 
> formats as I have quite experience of working with xml files and parsing 
> them using msxml and nsxml libraries and some of personal wrappers.

As I am known to not exactly like Microsoft's products, if you wanted to have me as a mentor, you'd need to use Open Source libraries to do the parsing.

> How about my idea of making the support of new file formats in the 
> plug-ins (suggested in my last post).

Sorry, I missed that idea.  Could you describe it again?

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> > Personally, I would _love_ to see a good graphical tool (maybe written 
> > in Tcl/Tk) to help merging conflicts in LaTeX files, but I just do not 
> > have the time...
> 
> Ok. What I am thinking is to implement something  like that of
> graphical *diff* command output but in these special file formats, it
> ought to have intelligence to bring out the difference of two files
> (like latex or xml) in a readable manner. For example, in case of xml
> files, if one file contains an inner tag block , then merger GUI
> should notify the user in a readable manner about this added tag
> rather than only the difference in lines.

A diff would be a first step, but the real issue are the merge helpers. And they need first and foremost a thought-through user interface design. The technical issues are all solveable, I am sure.

Ciao, Dscho