[Prophesy] General questions

[Rasmus Andersen]

(I'm just back from business travel and is quite bombed, so this
is even terser than usual.)

On Fri, May 03, 2002 at 05:45:14AM +0200, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> > 1) This project would seem to be a reaction to the BK thread on
> >    lk and its goal (I guess) would be to get Linus off BK. So,
> >    are we as a group aware/familiar with the features of BK that
> >    Linus, Garzik, Riel etc, like and want? If so, could somebody
> >    list them for me?
> 
> The best source of that information is the 'patch penguin' thread,
> where Linus talks about starting with it, and then talks soon after
> about what he wants in it.

I had to delete most of that thread in order to keep my server
from bursting into flames due to the flame density.

> I'd see it being useful to other people way before being attractive
> enough to Linus to break his BK habit.  I've noticed that I personally
> am spending far more time fiddling around creating and maintaining
> patch sets than I should, so... if I invested that time in getting
> some tools together instead of messing with the patch it would be a
> win already.

Perhaps you could explain a bit more here? This seems like something
we could work into an advantage.

> 
> The *immediate* purpose of this is to provide a repository that the
> patchbot can operate and that Linus can pull from, and which is not
> Bitkeeper.

If immediacy is a goal, then there is working code out there
already... But you know that.

> > 4) One of the features from 1) would be the distributed nature
> >    of BK, I guess? Are there any thoughts on how to handle this?
> 
> I thought I'd first think about having it work very well, locally.
> We don't need it to be distributed for either of the first two
> applications, that is, preparing patch sets and acting as a
> repository for the patchbot.  Or, another way of putting that is,
> Larry already provides us a way for it to be distributed, through
> his pull.  And no, I haven't thought at all about how technically
> difficult it will be to support a BK pull yet.  There might even
> be legal questions of whether Larry's patents allow us to support
> a BK pull, and if so... then I think we'll suddenly find a lot
> more developers on the project, so that possibility doesn't worry
> me.

One problem is that making something distributed sucks if the
initial design dont't allow for it.

Rasmus