[darcs-users] darcs serve

[Ben Franksen]

Xan wrote:
> @Ben, surely people want to see it
> 
> That's what I said. Why we tend to use people to write some "repository
> view" stuff in python and not integrate to darcs in haskell?

That would be much nicer, of course. Especially since darcsweb is 
unmaintained now for some years and tends to break, displaying ugly Python 
stack traces in the browser when it e.g. tries to parse the darcs annotate 
output (which changed since darcsweb was written). It is also a CGI script 
and CGI is out-dated and more difficult to integrate into a light-weight web 
server.

So: yes, if you feel like it, or know somebody who is, go ahead and do write 
something in Haskell. Whether it is web-based or uses gtk or whatever, it'll 
be better than what we have now. I guess it would be best to limit the scope 
of the project at first to something simple like hg view. It is always 
possible to extend it with more functionality later.

It would help a lot if we could establish a somewhat stable external API for 
getting information out of a Darcs repo. I am thinking of gradually 
developing such an API as we go along with such a GUI tool. It should reside 
in special modules of the Darcs library, something like Darcs.API.Xxx, to 
distinguish it from the rest of the Darcs "library".

Cheers
Ben

> On Sun, 09 Nov 2014 00:42:08 +0100
> Ben Franksen <ben.franksen at online.de> ha escrit:
> 
>> A very late follow-up:
>> 
>> I recently wrote a simple wrapper script for darcsweb. Darcsweb is, of
>> course, not a full-featured GUI for darcs. The idea was rather to have
>> something like 'hg view' for darcs.
>> 
>> The script is written (I should say: hacked together) in Python; it
>> copies some configuration data (including the complete darcsweb.cgi) into
>> temporary directories and then starts a properly configured CGI-enabled
>> web server. I have been thinking about uploading the repo somewhere but
>> it is really low quality code (though small and simple) and my Python-fu
>> is rather weak... I am sure someone else could do this much better.
>> 
>> If there is interest I can upload it to e.g. darcsden.
>> 
>> Gian Piero Carrubba wrote:
>> 
>> > Hi Xan,
>> > 
>> > sorry for the delay.
>> > 
>> > abstract: I agree with you.
>> > 
>> > * [Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 09:07:02AM +0200] Xan:
>> >>> Anyway, even if not strictly related, I would like to point to the
>> >>> graphical user interface seen in the camp video. Am I wrong or there
>> >>> where some plans for adopting/integrating it sometime ago ? I guess
>> >>> they don't still stand, but imo a graphical interface could be useful
>> >>> for the 'lonesome' developer.
>> >>> If I am right it also displayed the patches dependencies, a feature
>> >>> that seems very useful to me.
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>I was focus in web UI because it's for *everyone*. GUI is always
>> >>rectricted to a environment: you have to install GTK libs, or QT libs,
>> >>or .... with web, you just have to got simple browser....
>> > 
>> > You're right, a webUI is a simpler approach... well, apart when it
>> > isn't: if you had to install an http server, a DB, and so on, I would
>> > prefer a good old GUI for tasks that do not require the interface to be
>> > publicly accessible. Anyway Ganesh already ruled out this scenario.
>> > 
>> > I was mentioning the GUI only because I assume it is already available
>> > and IIRC someone proposed integrating/adopting it some time ago. And to
>> > be honest I don't even know if it was a full featured GUI. I vaguely
>> > remember the video and recall it showed the dependency tree, but don't
>> > know if it had other features apart from that.
>> > 
>> >>But I will be very glad with your application.
>> > 
>> > Probably I worded it wrong. Unfortunately I don't have the skills for
>> > this.
>> > 
>> >>I think that the graphical (web or GUI) is a critical point for darcs
>> >>adoption. It could be best versioning system in the world theorically
>> >>but if you don't bring a graphical interface (all cli), then you have a
>> >>minority of users.... this is my point of view. I'm just an sporadical
>> >>user.
>> > 
>> > Well, I guess it depends on personal preferences and usage. While I
>> > consider it a nice addition, I'm not so excited about it as I was,
>> > i.e., with regard to the rebase command that saved my day just a week
>> > or two ago (God bless you, Ganesh). Also, I would like a dependency
>> > tree graph but apart from this I'm not sure I would use the GUI much.
>> > But again I agree that it's a nice-to-have and that darcs could benefit
>> > from it.
>> > 
>> > Ciao,
>> > Gian Piero.
>> --
>> "Make it so they have to reboot after every typo." -- Scott Adams
>> 
>> 
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