Re: Tools for Sharing Tasks

[Javier Hernández Antúnez <jhernandez emergya com>]

2013/4/2 Jasper St. Pierre <jstpierre mecheye net>:
> 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
>
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> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list

Hi!

Completely agree with Jasper, using git is not a good idea. In fact, a
few years ago I started to work on a GTD application and sharing tasks
with many people and many devices was my main target. I also thought
on using git, but as Jasper has said: "It's too tied to source code
and programmers". Think that in every commit are a manual intervention
from a programmer, which usually needs to resolve conflicts by hand.

In my case, I decided to go with CouchDB because of its replication
features and I made two clients (a PyGtk app and an android one) as
proofs of concept. It worked pretty well and these first proff of
concept was easy to implement, but I stopped the development.
In case it helps, here is the initial code of the pygtk app [1].

Good luck with your app! ;)

My two cents,
Javi

[1]: https://launchpad.net/ezgtd
-- 
Javier Hernández Antúnez
<jhernandez emergya com>