[sugar] Develop Activity

[Ian Bicking]

Ivan Krsti? wrote:
> Eben Eliason wrote:
>> One editing session may change a dozen different source files, yet 
>> result in only one new journaled version.
> 
> The develop activity works on files directly on the actual
> filesystem, and as such, the journal won't automatically track what it
> does. That means the activity itself gets to choose what to journal, and
> we have full flexibility there. It also means the bulk of the
> activity development can be completed without worrying about the journal.
> 
> A number of people in the thread have speculated on a unification of the
> journal and the filesystem, and I'd have to think that through, but I
> get a bad vibe from it. Filesystems are well suited to things like
> source code, and I'm not really comfortable trying to shoehorn bunches
> of source in the journal, at least until we have a strong grip on how
> we're doing general grouping in the journal (and can decide whether the
> two models are compatible.)

I think there's a language problem we have here.  My impression of the 
Journal is that it's a catalog of events or actions or whatever.  More 
like an index than a concrete set of items.  The document store is a set 
of versioned resources.  Many things the journal catalogs will be items 
in the document store; but not all.  Items in the Journal may be 
transient.  For instance, a browser session may include the history of 
sites visited.  Once it is indexed in the journal, does it need to be 
stored anywhere else at all?  There's no substantive data there, just a 
record of events.  An edit event in the journal refers to a document, 
but it isn't one-and-the-same as the document, and it isn't even the 
same as a particular version because versions may not persist forever.

The journal -- index of things -- and the versioned document store seem 
really different to me, even if they may share implementation.  There's 
no reason you can't index files and work in activities, even if the 
actual content isn't in the document store.


-- 
Ian Bicking | ianb at colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org