-# A few bits about the RCS backends
+A few bits about the RCS backends
+
+[[toc ]]
## Terminology
## [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 the [[patchqueue]].
### 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.
-## [[Git]] (not yet included)
+## [[Git]]
-A patch with full [Git](http://git.or.cz) support is at <http://people.debian.org/~roktas/patches/ikiwiki/git.patch>. Regarding the patch, Recai says:
+Regarding the Git support, Recai says:
I have been testing it for the past few days and it seems satisfactory. I
haven't observed any race condition regarding the concurrent blog commits
FILE' (please see the relevant comment in mergepast for more details), so I
had to invent an ugly hack just for the purpose.
-Some other notes:
+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.
-- There are two separate helper packages in git.pm. To keep things self
- confined, I haven't split it up.
+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]].
-- I've used a (mini) Debug.pm during the tests and made it a separate file
- for the convenience of others. It relies on the "constant folding"
- feature of Perl, so there shouldn't be a runtime penalty (at least this
- is what the 'perl -MO=Deparse shows', haven't made a real benchmark).
+## [[Mercurial]]
-- rcs_notify() has not been implemented yet (I have noticed it after I
- finished the main work).
+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.
-- GIT backend uses the gitweb for repository browsing (the counterpart of
- ViewCVS).
+RCS commit from the outside are installed into M.
-- There might be some subs in GIT name space which you may prefer to move to
- the main code.
+M is directly used as working copy (M is also W).
-- Due to the reasons explained in the code, I've written an rcs_invoke()
- wrapper. May be there should be a better approach to reach the same
- goal.
+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.
-- There are some parts which I may change in future, like using a global
- rcs_fatal_error and the ugly error reporting code in _rcs_commit.
+CGI operates on M. rcs_commit() will commit directly in M.
-- Documentation is missing.
+If you have any question or suggestion about the Mercurial backend
+please refer to [Emanuele](http://nerd.ocracy.org/em/)
-It works for me, but of course in the end, the final decision is yours (due
-to mostly GIT quirks, the implementation is not clean as SVN). Feel free
-to fix/delete/add whatever you want. Hope it doesn't have any serious bug.
+## [[tla]]