[Monotone-devel] Re: user-friendly hash formats, redux

[graydon hoare]

Nathaniel Smith wrote:

> > True. This is considered a feature; if you feel that differentiating 
> > forks and trunks isn't something you want to do, then the proposal is 
> > irrelevant.
>
> I do want to differentiate forks and trunks.  It's just... I spell it
> '--branch'...

nah, it's not quite the same issue. within a branch, you can still have 
unlimited bifurcation. the question on the table is whether we should 
try to introduce some mechanism which *prevents* bifurcation, or at 
least marks a "globally linear" subgraph.

and we've been over this before. it usually boils down to some variation 
(synchronous or asynchronous) of having a "branch owner" -- person, 
robot, discriminated server -- issue a special linear cert. this 
unfortunately centralizes a failure case, and is not robust against 
backup/restore and multiple-issue errors on the case of the owner.

unless oren has some new idea about how to establish a stable, robust 
linear subgraph, I propose we just let the whole topic drop for a while. 
 we've been running around in circles all week, and not come up with 
much new since the last time this was raised 6 months ago. we're all 
getting bitchy, and there's not much gained by making the mood hostile. 
I already made enough bad blood by saying that phonetic hashes sounded 
"crazy"; I'm sorry for having said so already, but it's done. let's just 
focus on real bugs and easily-agreed-on improvements for a while.

-graydon