Re: [Monotone-devel] Is there something like libmonotone?

[Andreas Känner]

> I have never contributed to this mailing list before but I have been  
> lurking for quite a while now.  I'd like to start by saying that I  
> appreciate the work done on Monotone and I think that it has a great  
> basis for success.  Making a libmonotone is something that I have  
> desired for a long time and even started the process of figuring out how  
> much work would need to be done to make it happen.  If I didn't have a  
> day job I'd probably have already done it =).  See comments below.
>
> Nathaniel Smith wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 01:01:56PM -0600, Matthew A. Nicholson wrote:
> >
> > > Andreas K?nner wrote:
> > >
> > > > is there something like libmonotone? Just in case someone want to  
> > > > write a  GUI on top of monotone...
> > > I don't think there is a libmonotone, but there should be...
> >
> > This is actually a matter of debate :-) In particular, graydon has
> > pointed out that you really _want_ monotone to be a monolithic program
> > with an extremely limited and well-defined interface to the rest of
> > the world, because monotone is the only program we trust to manage
> > your database without screwing things up.  (we have enough trouble
> > making sure monotone won't screw things up in the first place...)
> I don't think that monotone has to be a monolithic (command line)  
> program to ensure the security that you are referring to.  The library  
> interface could provide an equivalent interface to the current command  
> line.  I don't think that the original suggestion was to make ALL of  
> monotones implementation details available in the library.
>
> > This does leave open the possibility of wrapping a library around it,
> > with some carefully designed interface, but since this interface
> > wouldn't be much lower-level than the current command-line interface,
> > and since the command-line interface is accessible from all languages
> > (not just C++), my suggestion would be to improve the command-line
> > interface's support for automation.
> There are many reasons why wrapping a command line program to make a  
> library are not as good as a regular library.   A significant portion of  
> the wrapping involves text processing, which is slow and buggy.  Any  
> slight change in the output can cause problems that are not immediately  
> noticeable.  A library interface would make it nearly trivial to add IDE  
> integration to monotone ( I could almost guarantee that I would write an  
> Eclipse plugin for it within a week ).  Another issue with command line  
> parsing and complex scripting is that the output desired by the scripts  
> is probably not the same as the output desired by a human.  The library  
> interfaces allows programming languages to use monotone at a level that  
> makes sense for programming and frees the monotone executable to provide  
> a good user interface without concern for scriptablity.

I agree with you in every sense.
I've tried monotone on my own for a small project and I think it would be  
exactly the right system for our small developing firm, because one of us  
works at home and has a slow internet connection. Therefore Subversion,  
which needs a central server, wouldn't make sense.
The problem is that I have to convince my colleagues to use Monotone too.  
We all develop on Mac OS X. On this system the terminal isn't really the  
natural way to do things (For example: a Subversion client is build into  
XCode, the main IDE on Mac OS X). I don't think that we need such a tight  
integration. A standalone GUI thats wrapps Monotone would be enough.
I will develop such a GUI, but at first I want to ask how to wrap calls to  
Monotone the right way.

Maybe someone from the core development team can explain how much work it  
would be to build a libmonotone or a XML interface?

Andreas


> > There's definitely a lot that could happen to make monotone more
> > scriptable, and I think we definitely should; I figure the best way to
> > accomplish that is to wait for people who want to script monotone,
> > then extend it in whatever ways they turn out to need...
> >
> > -- Nathaniel
>
>
>
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