[Monotone-devel] Re: Monotone server

[Bruce Stephens]

Daniel Carrera <address@hidden> writes:

> Bruce Stephens wrote:
>> I'd have thought a typical web host wouldn't let you install programs
>> at all, so the ssh option would also fail (since it requires that you
>> be able to run monotone on the remote host, albeit through ssh)?
>
> I figured I could just upload a pre-compiled Monotone binary. No?
> Maybe I am missing something.

I don't know.  Someone suggested that the space you get might be
mounted noexec (so preventing you from running the binary).  Depends
on the provider, I imagine, and I've no idea what's typical.

>
>> (From that point of view you'd be better off with one of the other
>> systems, all of which (I think) can work just by being able to stick
>> files on the host.  Or work on monotone's equivalent, which at one
>> point wasn't far off working, IIRC.)
>
> Can you recommend such a system? What I find attractive about Mtn,
> besides being easy to use, is the digital signatures.

I think the three major ones (bzr, git, mercurial) all support using
dumb servers.  None of them (as far as I know) support signatures in
quite the pervasive way that monotone does.  All support signing some
things (signing tags, typically).

Ease of use probably varies according to taste.  Viewed from a
distance they're all (disappointingly) equivalent, storing DAGs of
snapshots.

They differ more in the details, and which details matter probably
varies.  I work in an environment where we do code review (for every
change), so git's idiosyncratic (and awkwardly named) index, and
ability to revise commits (and ultimately automatically discard older
versions) is natural and valuable: it provides better support for the
workflow we used with CVS (preparing patches in a checkout, emailing
them out, then often revising them before integration).

For us, signing's not a big issue (we came from CVS, after all)---it
might be nice, but good support for code review is much more
important.  Other environments might naturally lead to different
choices.