Next message: Edgar Schwarz: "Re: DAV:revisions property for a workspace resource"
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 11:02:19 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <200004141502.LAA15274@tantalum.atria.com>
From: "Geoffrey M. Clemm" <geoffrey.clemm@rational.com>
To: ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org
Subject: Re: working resource DAV:merge-state property?
<geoff> With the MERGE method, a new working resource is created
with multiple predecessors. In some cases, the server will give the
new working resource an empty body; in other cases, the server will
support an automatic merge capability and can populate the working
resource with some initial text; and in other cases the initial text
is suitable for checking-in, after review by the user.It is probably
useful/important for the server to indicate which of these states
the working resource is in, e.g. DAV:initial; DAV:intermediate;
DAV:final </geoff>
From: jamsden@us.ibm.com
These are good and sensible arguments for additional merge support
in the server. I agree with all of them. However, in the interest
of simplification and achieving agreement on the critical
versioning semantics and protocol, should we defer this
discussion to a future enhancement? I'm just concerned that the
complexity of dealing with merging in a generic way without user
interaction will deflect our attention from more fundamental
issues. I'd be happy to address this after we get workspaces,
activities, and configurations nailed down, let alone core
versioning.
Since the proposal is just to add a single property to the working
resource (DAV:merge-state), and since the semantics of this property
are very simple (empty, something, done), I believe that the
complexity this adds to the protocol is significantly outweighed by the
benefit.
Cheers,
Geoff