Re: ANNOUNCE: Debian build scripts on a public Monotone server

["Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> > 1. Install Monotone, version 0.26 or later (the server is currently
> >    running 0.28).
>
> A project that hasn't silently faded away. Excellent.

and 0.30 is out, but has not reached Debian etch yet :)

> I noticed, though, that with Monotone you need synchronous
> communication. Either between two developers or between
> a Monotone server and a Monotone client. Is this true?

Monotone needs synchronous communications only during "mtn sync" or its
two halves, "mtn push" and "mtn pull", as per the Law of Least
Astonishment :)  The rest of the time, you're offline and talking to
your local database.

I did mention that I required the ability to work off-line on the
train, didn't I?

> (The alternative could be privacy guarded patch emails.)

A very poor alternative, very work-intensive and error-prone, and
without support for merging. It requires a human to merge manually,
keeping track of the ordering of the patches. That's how I sent most of
the far-reaching changes for gnat-4.1 to the Debian maintainer before I
became a full DD. Now I use svk for gcc/gnat in Debian, and it's much
better than emails, GPG-signed or not, even though I still hate svk.

There's also the issue that GPG only creates a trusted relationship
between a signature and a person (i.e. authentication); not between the
signature and the person's worthiness or trustability as regards code
contributions (i.e. authorisation). That's why Monotone uses its own
keys, separate from the GPG keys. The FAQ has a blurb on that, too.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.