Re: Versioning from another perspective

jamsden@us.ibm.com
Mon, 20 Dec 1999 15:13:15 -0500 

From: jamsden@us.ibm.com
To: bbum@codefab.com
cc: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Message-ID: <8525684D.0074B620.00@d54mta03.raleigh.ibm.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 1999 15:13:15 -0500
Subject: Re: Versioning from another perspective



Bill,
I'm thrilled to learn of your interest, and welcome your involvement in the
working group. We also feel that WebDAV will provide all the functionality
required by source code control systems, and are pleased to learn that we
may not have to compete with CVS! Since most of us are also developers, and
have used many code control systems, including CVS, we are well aware of
the typical use cases, and have made every attempt to include them in the
design of WebDAV versioning. We have also tried to keep things simple and
support existing document management systems which typically have different
requirements. You can find these use cases in the goals document along with
all the other WebDAV documents at http://www.webdav.org/specs/. Take a look
at the introduction section of the versioning specification for a good
summary of the WebDAV versioning model. Tim Ellison is also working on a
scenarios document that details a large number of use cases and how they
are realized by the protocol. This document will be available soon, and
should answer most of your questions.

You might also be interested in taking a look at DAV4J at
http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/dav4j. It provides a server framework for
integrating multiple repository managers. IBM will be contributing DAV4J as
open-source in a matter of a few weeks so it may be useful as the basis of
your work. What would need to be done is a client application that provides
a UI appropriate for distributed source code control. DAV4J would make
developing this client on WebDAV much easier.

Again, we welcome your involvement, and will help in any way we can to move
CVS to WebDAV.




Bill Bumgarner <bbum@codefab.com>@w3.org on 12/20/99 03:38:27 PM

Please respond to bbum@codefab.com

Sent by:  ietf-dav-versioning-request@w3.org


To:   ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
cc:

Subject:  Versioning from another perspective


Briefly:

     I have been following the ongoing discussions with great interest and
for the purpose of solving a very particular problem.

     Specifically, it is my goal to use an implementation of the versioning
specification that will result from this discussion to implement a fully
featured [GPL'd] revision control and configuration management system for
use
in software development projects.

     In particular, it is my goal to obsolete CVS.   CVS has cost myself
and my company many many hours of frustrating maintenance effort to keep it
working at an acceptable level.   Worse,  the CVS maintainers are not at
all
interested in supporting features that are necessary for the management of
web
related projects [binary files, in particular].

     As such, I'm interested in a dialog centered around how, exactly, the
versioning functionality would be used in a client/server environment to
manage
production source trees [including branch development and configuration
management issues].    The result of this discussion would be two fold;
use
cases demonstrating how various common source management operations would
be
carried out and validation of the ideas behind the design of the versioning
standard against yet-another-working-model.

     If appropriate, I would be happy to sponsor a mailing list for such a
discussion.   I will be on vacation from this Wednesday until January 5th--
if
a separate mailing list is appropriate, I will create it (and the
associated
web based archive) upon my return.

     thank you!

     b.bum