This is a request for comment on a convention for uniquely identifying user actions on the Internet. The motivating context was identifying commit changesets in version-control systems in a way independent of the specific VCS. It is anticipated that this format will have uses in recording many other similar sorts of transactions, including actions on web interfaces, where we want a simple cookie identifying “who did this and when”.
Tag Archives: reposurgeon
Repositories in Translation
I’ve been doing a lot of repository conversions recently, lifting ancient project histories from Subversion or even CVS into modern distributed version control systems. I’ve written about the technical problems with these conversions elsewhere but they also raise issues that are almost philosophical – and not unlike, actually, the challenges natural-language translators face moving a literary work between human languages.
Bride of the reposturgeon!
Another big repository conversion – the Hercules project – brings with it some new bug fixes and features, so reposurgeon 1.3 has shipped.
Looking for reposurgeon test cases
I just released reposurgeon 1.2 and am continuing to develop the tool. In order to test some of the newer features, I’m looking for repository conversions to do. If you run an open-source project that is still using CVS or Subversion, or some odd non-distributed VCS, I may be willing to lift it to git for you (and from git to any other DVCS you might prefer is a pretty small step). Details of this offer follow; limited time only, first come, first served.
(Why have me do it? Well…especially for older projects with a complex revision history, it’s a messy and daunting job. The tools are somewhat flaky, the difference between a sloppy conversion and a good one is significant, and good conversions require experience and judgment.)
Lessons learned from reposurgeon
OK, I’m officially coming out of my cave now, after what amounted to a two-week coding orgy. I’ve shipped reposurgeon 0.5; the code looks and feels pretty solid, the documentation is written, the test suite is in place, and I’ve got working repo-rebuild support for two systems, one of which is not git.
The rest is cleanup and polishing. Likely the next release or the one after will be 1.0. It’s time for an after-action report. As usual, I learned a few things from this project. Some are worth sharing.
Announcing reposurgeon – a tool for the good new days
I’ve been mostly blog-silent for the last week because I’ve been working my tail off on a new project. It’s reposurgeon, a tool for performing surgery on repository histories, and there are several interesting things to note about it.