Version control integration ideas for GSoC 2009
Overview: Make integration of version control systems with Drupal rock, and at the same time help out a module family that's going to be running on drupal.org soon.
Description:
drupal.org has great integration with CVS, including stuff like a commit messages page (which can also be viewed separately for each project), CVS account management, commit restrictions provided dynamically by the website, or automatic packaging of release tarballs just by specifying the CVS tag when creating the release node. All of that makes drupal.org an immensely powerful and easy to use platform for managing Drupal projects in CVS. As a downside though, all of that works only for CVS, and the fact that it doesn't cope with other version control systems is one major reason that drupal.org is still sticking with CVS all the way.
Version Control API was born as a Summer of Code project (the logs!) in 2007, and aims to provide version control integration for Drupal while not depending on any specific version control system (VCS), and being flexible enough for usage on sites other than drupal.org.
Read moreVersion Control API in Drupal 6 and beyond
It's been a long time since I last posted an update on the state of the Version Control API, assuming we disregard short teasers on Planet Drupal. Since this last article, Version Control API nearly died during my attempts to wholly restructure the data model for practically everything involving commits, branches & tags (now unified as "labels") and repository items (= files and directories). Luckily, the story has come to a good end. Well, "end"? Depends.
Read moreState of the Version Control API
Yeah, those were the times. Weekly status updates during the Google Summer of Code... well, I'm too lazy to do that when I'm not forced to :-P
Let's see... the version control api term says that the last status update was in September '07. Way too long ago. So what's up going on in the Version Control API realm at the moment? Lots of good stuff. (Read on! It's just the <!--break-->.)
User authentication in non-CVS repositories
How to grant access to repositories at all is an important issue, and it potentially comes with a slight regression compared to the current work flow for managing CVS accounts. One advantage of CVS is that it's easy to administer - in terms of user accounts, that would be a simple "passwd" file that contains all usernames that are allowed to commit. Dead easy to generate, and at least possible to keep in sync even in an automated way. However, more recent version control systems are less nice to handle - also caused by a better eye on security concerns. An overview.
Read moreCommit restrictions in distributed version control
I just spent some time in #git to further investigate how our CVS access control scripts would translate to distributed version control systems, in order to help determine the right direction for our new GHOP-powered Git and Mercurial backends (currently being worked on, more on that to come later). Short answer: keep out of that altogether - it's not DVCS style to restrict project maintainers like that. Read on for a more detailed analysis.
Read morePost-SoC progress
Seems I haven't given up on Version Control API & friends by now, which one could say is a good thing. Due to my rather silent nature, there haven't been as many g.d.o posts as during the Summer of Code (namely, none until now). Nevertheless a good share of remaining issues have been resolved, and missing features have been added. Here's a short rundown of what has been achieved since part 2 of my wrap-up, which was written a month ago.
Read moreAre you storing your Drupal sites or configs in a version control system? If so, which?
Version control wrap-up, part 2: comments
Version control wrap-up, part 1: modules
It's over! Google Summer of Code 2007 had its official "pencils down" on Monday, 19:00 UTC - which was 21:00 at my place, perfect for a last sprint... but I digress. According to Google, mentors are supposed to evaluate projects based on the state that they were in at that time. Which means it's time for me to wrap it up and explain what I achieved in those two or three months. In addition to these writings, I set up a test site at http://www.petsovits.at/versioncontrol/ where you can try out most of these things in action.
The wrap-up is becoming too long to conveniently fit into one single blog entry, so I'll split it up into two halves. This one basically covers the hard facts: which modules I wrote during the Summer of Code, what they do, and how they work. (Part 2 is now also available.)
Read moreProgress, aims & challenges
The end of the Google Summer of Code is nearing, and stuff is coming together in my version control modules. It seems to me like I'll not be achieving everything that I would have liked, but most of the important stuff is going to be ready next Monday. And now for a short report of the last one-and-a-half weeks.
Read more