Revision control

["Adam Lofts" <adam lofts gmail com>]

Hi,

I am considering applying for the Summer of Code this year and am hoping some people on this list can give me some guidance. The project I am interested in is a Ubuntu idea, presumably it could also go under the GNOME project:

Revision-controlled home directories

Ubuntu should have home directories under revision control so users can go "back in time" to older versions of their documents. This should be easy to point at a central server, but default to the local machine. This would be similar to a feature in Apple's forthcoming OS X 10.5 "Leopard."

Clearly this task requires interfacing the file system with revision control. At first I planned to simply relate basic SCM commands with buttons in nautilus e.g.

"Allow source control" -> git init_db
"Last revision" -> git branch _last_revision_hash_
"Current revision" -> git branch master

However a more powerful approach seems to be to integrate revisions into the file system. E.g. One could use a uri to specify the revision:

revision:///home/adam/Photos#_revision_hash_

Then hopefully some cunning integration into nautilus would provide an accessible way for users to revision control their data.

I have read about gvfs and am interested in whether writing a uri provider is a good approach.

Thanks,
Adam