Re: GSoC 2011: Synchronizing F-Spot data

[Simon Lindgren <simon n lindgren gmail com>]

mån 2011-04-04 klockan 12:04 +0200 skrev Sven Utcke:
> Hello Simon,
> 
> > > > > > Now I need to find a mentor.
> > > > 
> > > > If you are looking for one on this list, you might want to
> > > > clarify what the requirements for / expectations of a mentor
> > > > are...
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Ugh, minutes after sending I found this:
> > http://people.gnome.org/~federico/docs/summer-of-code-mentoring-howto/index.html
> 
> Ok, sounds as if you really need one of the F-Spot developers, so I am
> definitely out.

That's too bad... :(
The list is not exactly overflowing with candidates...

> > > Yes, and I looked at it briefly. It handles concurrent access too, but
> > > that is only true for files that are actually synced by Unison. If
> > > storing metadata as .xmp sidecars and then some other file format for
> > > the tags, the import rolls, the versioning and so on, then Unison could
> > > be a workable solution for all of the synchronization.
> 
> You could simply sync the database, couldn't you?  You would need to
> write some conflict resolution code, but as sqlite3 can be translated
> to text and back to db format, this ought to be fairly
> straightforward...
> 

Ah, yes, that would be possible too... my suggestion is probably
over-complicated :)

> > > I mainly see one issue with Unison: It requires the server and the
> > > client to be running the same version of the program. I think a
> > > natural step for a thing like this is to expand it to also include
> > > a web service so people don't need to host their own servers. And
> > > with Unison this might raise problems with versioning.
> 
> Yeah, that is a _mayor_ pain with unison.  Others work around this by
> making there own unison executable part of the client...
> 
> Sven

Yes, that could be doable... but there is still the issue of the server
using the "wrong" version. It would work fine for the web service part
though, and the case of using your own server could be done by using the
system-installed Unison and leaving the task of keeping the unison
versions in-sync to the user (most likely capable of that, if he/she has
a server :P).

-- 
Simon Lindgren