Re: Simple commit mechanism for non-technical users

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Aug 19, 2009, 07:49 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0908190940430.5594@intel-tinevez-2-302>
In-Reply-To: <ef72456d0908180905u18593b63tdc850b8552db30b9@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, D Sundstrom wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> I use git to manage all project artifacts, including documentation, 
> proposals, presentations, and so on.
> 
> However, I have a hard time convincing non-technical staff to learn
> enough about git or to take the time to go through the effort of
> committing changes to a repository.  So the steady stream of email
> attachments with "Acme Specification v3" or "final final spemco
> proprosal" continues.
> 
> I'd hoped there was a simple web interface that would allow a user to
> upload and commit a file to a repository, but I've had no luck finding
> one.  (I've used cgit for browsing, but it is read-only).
> 
> Is anyone aware of a simple way I can have my non-technical users
> manage their documents against a git repository?  Ideally this would
> involve no installation of software on their machine (unless it were
> compelling, for example, the Finder plugin for SVN on the mac was a
> great tool for these users; or at least those on a mac...)

You contradict yourself here, the Finder plugin needs to be installed, and SVN, too.

As for your problem: I think you need a specific solution. If I understand you correctly, files which have the same name (but maybe a suffix "v3" or similar before the extension), and they should be committed to a Git repository.

Then you have a bunch of people who do not want to care about learning proper version control.

This is what I would do: write a very simple .cgi (I'd use Perl for that), which has a file upload button, takes the name as commit message (or maybe adds a field where you can type in a commit message, but that might be asking your bunch of Aunt Tillies too much), strips the "v3"-like suffixes ($name =~ s/[-_ ]*v\d+(\.[A-Za-z0-9]{1,5})$/$1/;), set author and committer information according to IP (and refuse if the IP is not in the internal mapping) and commit.

The whole script would probably not be larger than 50 lines, and require Git to be installed on the server.

The bigger problem is that your Aunt Tillies most likely would not love gitweb, so you need a fancier interface.

Ciao, Dscho