Re: Tools for Sharing Tasks

[אנטולי קרס נר <tombackton gmail com>]

I just checked what Snowy is... sounds useful, but the Gnome Live page
hasn't been touched for long time and the FAQ says it's not stable yet
and not safe to trust.

I agree git is not meant for sharing, but here's the idea I have in
mind:

Task sharing is not simple file sharing, so I can't let users share the
task files manually. The task management application uses git behind the
scenes, just like SparkleShare uses git for file sharing. There
shouldn't be any conflicts because program logic takes care of sharing,
sync, giving tasks to employees, getting "task done" signals from them,
receiving tasks from supervisor, etc. No need to use git directly. If
there's a conflict, it means a bug. A problem in program logic.

The advantage is that sharing tasks becomes extremely easy. Getting your
own local repo and a remote repo for task sharing is extremely easy and
accessible. Once you set the application to use a given repo, you don't
need to touch git.

XMPP has the advantage you can see people's avatars and use Jabber to
instant-message the people you work with, but this can be made to work
as an addition, in parallel to git.

Backup and version management and very important in projects, so using
git also allows very easy backup and control of versions and project
status.

And finally, using git makes changes to the application backend very
easy. git allows me to play with file sharing and sync features and
change the implementation, without affecting the user or resetting the
user's task database or making the user create new
repos/accounts/folders.

- Anatoly

On ג', 2013-04-02 at 12:29 -0400, Jasper St. Pierre wrote:
> git isn't designed as a sharing protocol. It's a source control tool.
> People have tried to take some of the versioning technology behind git
> and adapt it to other things (SparkleShare, there are some git-backed
> issue trackers, etc.)
>
>
> As a simple example, what happens when you have a merge conflict?
> There's a miscommunication, and one guy sets the task from OPEN to
> DONE, and another guy sets it from OPEN to INPROGRESS.
>
>
> When they try to share tasks, git is going to fail and ask them to
> edit a file with:
>
> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>
> DONE
> ================
>
> INPROGRESS
>
> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
>
>
> unless you're smart about how you present merge conflicts.
>
>
> This is just an example, and I could come up with a large number of
> other reasons why git's power is a deficiency when trying to build a
> usable simple sharing system. I don't believe in the technology behind
> git as a simple way to share stuff. It's too tied to source code and
> programmers. I think a simple pub/sub model, either using XMPP, or an
> open-source service (Snowy), or something else, is simpler and the
> easier way to go.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 12:25 PM, אנטולי קרסנר <tombackton gmail com>
> wrote:
>         Hi,
>         
>         This is a somewhat technical question, I hope this is the
>         right place
>         for it.
>         
>         I'm writing a GTK application which manages tasks and
>         projects. At the
>         moment it's more or less like GTG (Getting Things Gnome). I
>         want to add
>         task sharing, and I've been thinking what's the right way to
>         do that.
>         
>         I checked what other people do. GTG uses the XMPP pubsub
>         extension
>         (publish & subscribe), which seems to do the job, but it's not
>         exactly
>         designed for sharing tasks. It does work, but it requires you
>         to setup
>         the server.
>         
>         I've been thinking and I found another idea: use a git
>         repository.
>         
>         This way people can easily watch how projects develop - this
>         way we
>         easily achieve the publish&subscribe capability - and sharing
>         tasks
>         between team members is as easy as working with git, which is
>         already
>         very common. Task sync is simple sync of files in the repo.
>         And it
>         doesn't require any extra work: starting a new local git repo
>         is
>         extremely easy by typing "git init", and starting a repo on a
>         server is
>         done by creating a user on gitorious and creating a repo
>         there.
>         
>         Some sites don't offer private repos for free, but encryption
>         will be
>         used anyway to allow maximal privacy anyway, so it shouldn't
>         be a
>         problem. (GitLab offers 10 private repos for no charge if you
>         really
>         need 100% privacy)
>         
>         I'd like to hear more ideas and make a wise decision, which
>         tool is the
>         best one for task sharing. Git sounds very good to me, but I'm
>         not an
>         expert (just a software engineering student, actually).
>         
>         
>         - Anatoly
>         
>         _______________________________________________
>         desktop-devel-list mailing list
>         desktop-devel-list gnome org
>         https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
>
>
>
> -- 
>   Jasper