Re: Version issues
Edgar Schwarz (Edgar.Schwarz@de.bosch.com)
Tue, 27 Apr 1999 12:52:50 +0200 (MESZ)
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 12:52:50 +0200 (MESZ)
From: Edgar Schwarz <Edgar.Schwarz@de.bosch.com>
To: Sankar Virdhagriswaran <sv@hunchuen.crystaliz.com>
cc: dbarrell@opentext.com, "'Sankar Virdhagriswaran'" <sv@crystaliz.com>,
In-Reply-To: <009801be8ff8$8a149a60$d0acddcf@crystaliz.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GHP.4.05.9904271215390.973-100000@hpmx15.bk.bosch.de>
Subject: Re: Version issues
Hi,
I'm a new reader of ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org. Therefore I wan't to
introduce myself first.
I'm responsible for configuration management of a software group
developing code for telecommunications equipment. At the moment we
still use a homegrown system of shell scripts and Makefiles for
integrated build and configuration management based on RCS.
I know a little bit about PCMS, Clearcase and Sniff.
BTW, is it okay to send to the above addresses including the list itself ?
So I will give you some first comments. Please remember that I'm still
a newbie concerning WebDAV :-)
On Mon, 26 Apr 1999, Sankar Virdhagriswaran wrote:
> As far as I can tell (and it is not my role to say this - so take it with a
> grain of salt), there seems to be some consensus on two levels for
> versioning support. Bruce from Novell had suggested 3 levels, but did not
> follow up to some objections raised. So, I am assuming that folks don't mind
> 2 levels.
I agree (If this makes any difference :-) ) that two levels + no versioning
is enough. There are already plenty of permutations of different clients and
servers in this case.
> Fair enough. Simple versioning to me implies a system like SCCS (from a user
> interaction model). When I want to evolve a file, I check it out. The system
> locks the file such that nobody else can edit it at the same time. When I
> check-in my changes, a new version (revision ?) is created.
>
> Configuration management allows me to identify a group of files (resources
> in the HTTP context) as being a consistent unit. I think of each HTML page
> (i.e., the most popular HTTP resource) as a configuration for the reasons
> given above (embedding and linking, and the need for parallel development).
So it seems we already need configurations for this rather standard case.
> Typically, the person editing the english page coordinates their work with
> the person editing the french page. Unless these two pages are considered to
> be part of a set whose consistency has to be maintained (i.e., a
> configuration), the system cannot help resolve potential conflicts that
> might arise when one of the authors looks (i.e., reads) the page being
> edited by the other author in order to edit their page (and vise versa).
> This in my mind results in a requirement for configurations. And, read-write
> based conflicts - which I have been pushing for without much success. Even
> if we don't do read-write conflicts, at least configurations help me deal
> with multi-lingual authroing situations. Maybe there are simpler solutions,
> but given the fact that we are dealing with embedded and linked resources
> and given that some of these resources have variants that are edited by
> multiple people in parallel, I really can't see how simple versioning will
> work. My prediction is that with tools that support simple versioning (i.e.,
> level 1), the authoring organization will build procedures to implement
> 'configuration management' suffering through human imposed errors or
> serializing the development process losing productivity. But, hey, that is
> the market choice!!
I fully agree with you that level 1 without configurations would be
pretty worthless. So they should be included.
Workspaces and activities are things that are difficult to agree
on and more complex than configurations (which I imagine as a collection
of revisions of versioned resources. Possibly containing more
configurations e.g. to describe a hierarchical view of a nontrivial
software project)
It's true that workspaces and activities are necessary but I fear that there
are a lot of slightly different ways how they are realized in practice.
Just have a look at the CM tools I mentioned above. But ultimately they
all need 'configurations' as a versioned set of fixed revisions of
resources.
So this least common denominator should already be included in level 1.
Regards, Edgar
--
Edgar.Schwarz@de.bosch.com ON/EMS1, 07191/13-3382 Niklaus Wirth:
Privat kann jeder soviel C programmieren oder Videos ansehen wie er mag.
Albert Einstein: Mach es so einfach wie moeglich, aber nicht einfacher.