Re: An attempt at taxonomy
Dave Long (dave@sb.aol.com)
Tue, 03 Sep 1996 14:12:06 -0700
Perhaps I should clarify -- my intent was not to isolate discussion,
rather, since there is considerable overlap in list membership, to
reduce the amount of duplicate mailing. If we did have a clear sense
of what threads would be discussed on which list, I think it would help,
not hinder, the goal of arriving at orthogonal protocols.
In any event, since there is no consensus on a suitable division, I
also agree that the lists ought to be combined.
-Dave
sorry, I can't resist: how about this division?
distributed authoring covers workspace issues:
- retrieval of documents
- changing them
- lock mechanism
version control covers repository issues:
- configuration of branches/tips
- release/promotion of a version
- lock policies
Authoring in the absence of versioning means that one may
manually set locks to control concurrency, and GETs retrieve
a resource, and PUTs replace it.
Authoring in the absence of version control, but with versioning,
means that one may manually set locks to control concurrency,
GETs (by default) retrieve the tip of a branch (but can retrieve
previous revisions), and PUTs result in a new tip revision along
that branch.
Authoring with version control means that one interacts with the
CM system (acquiring these cookies we've been discussing) to
define which branch one sees oneself (setting up the "workspace")
and to define which branches others see (release/promotion).
In addition, the CM system may implicitly set and release locks
to control concurrency, according to its policies.
Authoring with version control probably also implies that one's
current activities are visible in some way to oneself and
others. "what am I working on", "who has this URL locked,
and what are they working on", etc.
(I hope that what I've stated here as "branch/tip" is equally
applicable to change-set, etc. systems...)