[dokuwiki] Re: Google Summer of Code
- From: Myron Turner <turnermm02@xxxxxxx>
- To: dokuwiki@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:50:40 -0600
On 2/2/2011 5:00 PM, Michael Hamann wrote:
What I can imagine quite well is
implementing a storage API that is only used for storing and reading old
revisions, thus replacing the attic/ directory. For the current pages it
won't work imho as there are too many place with file_exists, filemtime
etc. calls. Old revisions aren't read that often so the overhead isn't
that important there, they are parsed and rendered anyway. It makes
sense to use something like Git there as Git is much better at storing a
long history of edits efficiently than what we currently have. Of course
then the current system should remain default and Git should be
available as plugin.
The other part of the idea is to have Git in order to make things like
branching parts of the wiki possible.
I however don't know how many users really
want/need that so I would say let us rather drop that idea unless there
should be many people who want that. If we get a three-way-merge PHP
library (from that merge conflicts idea) this could also easily be
implemented in the sync plugin.
I am in complete agreement here with Michael. One of the reasons people
come to Dokuwiki is the simplicity (for the administrator/users) of the
text-based storage of pages. If you switch over to git for storing
pages, you will have one more, though probably more useful,
database-style wiki. My feeling is that if you did this, you would
have a pre-git user base and a post-git user base and that at least some
of pre would stop upgrading and would eventually fall away or would
simply stick with what they had before the change.
You might also find a similar break-down among Dokuwiki plugin
developers. Having spent time learning the in's and out's of dokuwiki,
now they would become responsible for an external API.
Michael's comment on branching is apropos here and underlines just where
git's strengths are--with software developers--but not of great use to
great numbers of dokuwiki users who use dokuwiki for clubs, small
businesses, for in-house communication, for civic organizations, family
stuff, hobbies, and on and on. All of this comes through on the forum.
--
Myron Turner
http://mturner.org/
http://mturner.org/fckgLite
http://www.mturner.org/dwfck/doku.php
http://www.room535.org
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