-# A few bits about the RCS backends
+A few bits about the RCS backends
+
+[[toc ]]
## Terminology
You browse and web-edit the wiki on W.
+W "belongs" to ikiwiki and should not be edited directly.
+
## [darcs](http://darcs.net/) (not yet included)
Support for using darcs as a backend is being worked on by [Thomas
-Schwinge](mailto:tschwinge@gnu.org).
+Schwinge](mailto:tschwinge@gnu.org), although development is on hold curretly.
+There is a patch in [[todo/darcs]].
### How will it work internally?
(To be continued.)
+#### Another possible approach
+
+Here's what I (tuomov) think, would be a “cleaner” approach:
+
+ 1. Upon starting to edit, Ikiwiki gets a copy of the page, and `darcs changes --context`.
+ This context _and_ the present version of the page are stored in as the “version” of the
+ page in a hidden control of the HTML.
+ Thus the HTML includes all that is needed to generate a patch wrt. to the state of the
+ repository at the time the edit was started. This is of course all that darcs needs.
+ 2. Once the user is done with editing, _Ikiwiki generates a patch bundle_ for darcs.
+ This should be easy with existing `Text::Diff` or somesuch modules, as the Web edits
+ only concern single files. The reason why the old version of the page is stored in
+ the HTML (possibly compressed) is that the diff can be generated.
+ 3. Now this patch bundle is applied with `darcs apply`, or sent by email for moderation…
+ there are many possibilities.
+
+This approach avoids some of the problems of concurrent edits that the previous one may have,
+although there may be conflicts, which may or may not propagate to the displayed web page.
+(Unfortunately there is not an option to `darcs apply` to generate some sort of ‘confliction resolution
+bundle’.) Also, only one repository is needed, as it is never directly modified
+by Ikiwiki.
+
+This approach might be applicable to other distributed VCSs as well, although they're not as oriented
+towards transmitting changes with standalone patch bundles (often by email) as darcs is.
+
+> The mercurial plugin seems to just use one repo and edit it directly - is
+> there some reason that's okay there but not for darcs? I agree with tuomov
+> that having just the one repo would be preferable; the point of a dvcs is
+> that there's no difference between one repo and another. I've got a
+> darcs.pm based on mercurial.pm, that's almost usable... --bma
+
+>> IMHO it comes down to whatever works well for a given RCS. Seems like
+>> the darcs approach _could_ be done with most any distributed system, but
+>> it might be overkill for some (or all?) While there is the incomplete darcs
+>> plugin in [[todo/darcs]], if you submit one that's complete, I will
+>> probably accept it into ikiwiki.. --[[Joey]]
## [[Git]]
FILE' (please see the relevant comment in mergepast for more details), so I
had to invent an ugly hack just for the purpose.
-## [mercurial](http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/)
+By design, Git backend uses a "master-clone" repository pair approach in contrast
+to the single repository approach (here, _clone_ may be considered as the working
+copy of a fictious web user). Even though a single repository implementation is
+possible, it somewhat increases the code complexity of backend (I couldn't figure
+out a uniform method which doesn't depend on the prefered repository model, yet).
+By exploiting the fact that the master repo and _web user_'s repo (`srcdir`) are all
+on the same local machine, I suggest to create the latter with the "`git clone -l -s`"
+command to save disk space.
+
+Note that, as a rule of thumb, you should always put the rcs wrapper (`post-update`)
+into the master repository (`.git/hooks/`) as can be noticed in the Git wrappers of
+the sample [[ikiwiki.setup]].
+
+## [[Mercurial]]
+
+The Mercurial backend is still in a early phase, so it may not be mature
+enough, but it should be simple to understand and use.
+
+As Mercurial is a distributed RCS, it lacks the distinction between
+repository and working copy (every wc is a repo).
+
+This means that the Mercurial backend uses directly the repository as
+working copy (the master M and the working copy W described in the svn
+example are the same thing).
+
+You only need to specify 'srcdir' (the repository M) and 'destdir' (where
+the HTML will be generated).
+
+Master repository M.
+
+RCS commit from the outside are installed into M.
+
+M is directly used as working copy (M is also W).
+
+HTML is generated from the working copy in M. rcs_update() will update
+to the last committed revision in M (the same as 'hg update').
+If you use an 'update' hook you can generate automatically the HTML
+in the destination directory each time 'hg update' is called.
+
+CGI operates on M. rcs_commit() will commit directly in M.
+
+If you have any question or suggestion about the Mercurial backend
+please refer to [Emanuele](http://nerd.ocracy.org/em/)
+
+## [[tla]]
+
+## rcs
+
+There is a patch that needs a bit of work linked to from [[todo/rcs]].
+
+## [Monotone](http://monotone.ca/)
+
+There is a patch in [[bugs/Monotone_rcs_support]]. It works, but its conflict handling is a little ugly.
+
+In normal use, monotone has a local database as well as a workspace/working copy.
+In ikiwiki terms, the local database takes the role of the master repository, and
+the srcdir is the workspace. As all monotone workspaces point to a default
+database, there is no need to tell ikiwiki explicitly about the "master" database. It
+will know. (BTW - this is also true of subversion. It might be possible to simplify the svn config?)
+
+The patch currently supports normal committing and getting the history of the page.
+To understand the parallel commit approach, you need to understand monotone's
+approach to conflicts:
+
+Monotone allows multiple micro-branches in the database. There is a command,
+`mtn merge`, that takes the heads of all these branches and merges them back together
+(turning the tree of branches into a dag). Conflicts in monotone (at time of writing)
+need to be resolved interactively during this merge process.
+It is important to note that having multiple heads is not an error condition in a
+monotone database. This condition will occur in normal use. In this case
+'update' will choose a head if it can, or complain and tell the user to merge.
+
+For the ikiwiki plugin, the monotone ikiwiki plugin borrows some ideas from the svn ikiwiki plugin.
+On prepedit() we record the revision that this change is based on (I'll refer to this as the prepedit revision). When the web user
+saves the page, we check if that is still the current revision. If it is, then we commit.
+If it isn't then we check to see if there were any changes by anyone else to the file
+we're editing while we've been editing (a diff bewteen the prepedit revision and the current rev).
+If there were no changes to the file we're editing then we commit as normal.
-Being worked on by Emanuele Aina.
+It is only if there have been parallel changes to the file we're trying to commit that
+things get hairy. In this case the current approach is to
+commit the web changes as a branch from the prepedit revision. This
+will leave the repository with multiple heads. At this point, all data is saved.
+The system then tries to merge the heads with a merger that will fail if it cannot
+resolve the conflict. If the merge succeeds then everything is ok.
-<http://techn.ocracy.org/ikiwiki>
+If that merge failed then there are conflicts. In this case, the current patch calls
+merge again with a merger that inserts conflict markers. It commits this new
+revision with conflict markers to the repository. It then returns the text to the
+user for cleanup. This is less neat than it could be, in that a conflict marked
+revision gets committed to the repository.