From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Felipe Contreras Subject: Re: moving to a git-backed wiki Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2011 19:50:28 +0200 Message-ID: References: <7vzkqg4x2h.fsf_-_@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> <20110131225529.GC14419@sigill.intra.peff.net> <20110201201144.GA16003@sigill.intra.peff.net> <4D488DCD.3080305@eaglescrag.net> <4D4929F4.3020805@snarc.org> <4D4A11D7.4040103@eaglescrag.net> <20110203174518.GA14871@sigill.intra.peff.net> <20110204061622.GB2455@sigill.intra.peff.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: "J.H." , Vincent Hanquez , Jay Soffian , Scott Chacon , Junio C Hamano , git@vger.kernel.org To: Jeff King X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Feb 04 18:53:29 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1PlPqZ-0005Zt-Cs for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Fri, 04 Feb 2011 18:53:27 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752030Ab1BDRxW (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Feb 2011 12:53:22 -0500 Received: from mail-fx0-f46.google.com ([209.85.161.46]:61507 "EHLO mail-fx0-f46.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751578Ab1BDRxV (ORCPT ); Fri, 4 Feb 2011 12:53:21 -0500 Received: by fxm20 with SMTP id 20so2673964fxm.19 for ; Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:53:20 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date :message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type; bh=33YeE+oi5DoeUNFiTzxotp+m64hYgIfh7Mp8O45uyNY=; b=VQKF0Wn44u59Al/uhKGJ/BNrxTfOpuf5TqntAa8CdF+Vvl7mDLjxnllmrt7GtFtWF+ VcZJ/EsIfWOxhBAAxUsGCU1S5ft8t+z4kV2P3ttP/WlaVgbcutPeORD+jFuAM18SltBW 9bd4qpGcrGldgs4udo6BtOxHUvUeFqUejgTxM= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type; b=rp0WU41ZFNzSo8aIuXOYwjxdokj6c3M9dCY9CKhC1bSWGXv/yLRoUcTO19NC3x6gIy g5WMV2lKbmHolYkepZ8GWvCnrloHLOBiE5JVRCwIALJtnTdCFd7qBMO4UR92JgkfWgc/ xyYZbuaay03qCP1M++m43cArIKHGNPR9nsOg8= Received: by 10.223.73.202 with SMTP id r10mr5877964faj.133.1296841828778; Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:50:28 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.223.105.78 with HTTP; Fri, 4 Feb 2011 09:50:28 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <20110204061622.GB2455@sigill.intra.peff.net> Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 8:16 AM, Jeff King wrote: > On Thu, Feb 03, 2011 at 10:34:38PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote: > >> > Forget about a git-backed wiki for a moment, and imagine a regular old >> > Mediawiki. What are the operations you can perform? You can look at >> > the current or any past version of a page, you can do diffs between >> > versions of pages, and you can create a new version of a page. All >> > through some CGI forms. >> >> Howe about these? > > I've never really used a wiki in any in-depth way, so be gentle if my > utter cluelessness about these features shows through. > >> 1) Support for discussion; since changes can be controversial. > > Doesn't this just happen on special Talk: pages? Couldn't these just be > pages with special names? Could be. >> 2) Support for article move; so everything is kept organized. > > Isn't that even simpler in a git-backed wiki? You just move the files. > Obviously you would want to update links, too, and presumably the wiki > software helps with that. But that is outside the scope of data storage. > In a git-backed wiki, you would get one atomic commit with the move and > link updating. Yeah. >> 3) Support for "who is linking here". Also helps reorganization. > > Again, is that a fundamental storage issue? It seems like you could > implement that easily on top of basic storage with a grep (and some > caching if you are going to let people do it a lot via the web). I doubt that. That's where you need an SQL database, to make it fast. >> 4) Support for categories. Ditto. > > I have no idea how categories work. Special page naming and/or > directories? Each page has a tag [[Category::Tips]], and then the the Category::Tips page gets a new link automatically. Again, SQL helps. >> 5) Support for watchlist, e-mail notifications. So that you are >> up-to-date with the changes. > > Post-receive hook? Yeah, but you need to store the watchers, and their preferences. Again, SQL. >> 6) Support for contribution backtracking. So that it's easy to know who's who. > > git log? git blame? :) Sure, 'git log' would do it... Very inefficiently. >> 7) Personal wiki pages (with discussion). So you can put information >> about yourself, and general notes. > > Specially named pages for people? Right. > Obviously I'm just filling in these features off the top of my head. > MediaWiki is a mature system, and I doubt that either ikiwiki or gollum > has nearly the same featureset. But that was never my point. In the bit > you quoted, my point was that a git-interface to a wiki was useful and > feasible. And I stand by that. It might be possible to implement some functionality of a full blown wiki such as MediaWiki on a git backed wiki, but my point is that it's not there _now_, and more likely would never be. > Even with just the basic functionality of fetch/diff/push, that still > makes it a useful interface into an existing wiki for a large number of > users who just want to do simple stuff (or power users who happen to be > doing simple stuff at the moment). > > I also happen to think you could put all of those features into a > git-backed wiki, and build the web features on _top_ of git access. But > I'm not volunteering to work on that. Exactly, and nobody is volunteering for that. MediaWiki is the best, it has all the features, and it's already there. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras