[Sugar-devel] [RFC] Better disk format for journal entries

[Michael Stone]

Excerpts from Michael Stone's message of Sun Jun 27 05:06:31 +0200 2010:

>> I've longed, for quite some time, for an encoding of Sugar's journal entries
>> that is more amenable to manipulation with standard Linux tools and APIs. I've
>> also longed for a format that is friendly to rainbow and which can encode both
>> the data necessary for today's journal as well as the data necessary for Eben's
>> Journal redesign mockups.
> 
> If we are to introduce a new transport format for Journal entries, I'd
> much rather have us try to use one that's interoperable with other
> software. 

You and I may simply have different ideas of what "other software" it is most
important to interoperate with.

For me, the relevant software includes:

    ls, cat, head, rm, cp, du, grep, find, rsync, vim, emacs, git, *httpd, and
    rainbow

What software are you thinking of?

> During past discussions on this list a few candidates were named
> (I don't have references handy, but the list archives should help locating
> them).

I googled for a bit but couldn't find your references. Could you be more
specific with either search terms or links?

> As for changes to the data model: While the Journal obviously needs to
> change, I believe the current data store to be generic enough to store
> anything we're going to need for now. The object ids are globally unique
> and can thus be used for inter-object references. Actions can be stored
> in metadata-only entries.

I appreciate your skill in encoding a more complex data model into the dark
corners of the current DS API but I have to say that the encoding feels forced
and, so far as I can tell, the resulting human factors still suck. No?

>> Already, I find it helpful both for browsing my DS with filesystem tools and
>> for resuming activities from the Terminal. 
> 
> You might find datastore-fuse [1] useful as well. It's still experimental,
> but works well enough that I use it for transferring attachments from my
> MUA directly to the data store / Journal (which I use for managing photos
> besides other things).
> 
> While it's still rather basic, it provides access to the full data store
> content (including metadata as extended attributes) with full
> read/write/delete support (data+metadata).

Thanks for the link.

>> What cool things can you think of to do with it?
>> [1]: Links to my sugar git repo:
>> 
>>     http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/mstone/sugar/commit/?h=xos
>>     http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/mstone/sugar/snapshot/sugar-xos.tar.gz
>>     git://dev.laptop.org/users/mstone/sugar
> 
> Could you be convinced to move your repositories to (or duplicate them
> on) git.sugarlabs.org? 

I am far from convinced but, as a favor to you and Bernie, here is

   http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/sugar/repos/mstone

(and if you keep pestering me, then I might even manage to keep it synced for
you...)

> This is also half of an answer to your mail re. rainbow patches: My
> repo is on my home server which only has a public IPv6 address

This is not a problem: I already have IPv6 access both at home and through
*.laptop.org and I am considerably interested [1] in helping more people to get
it.

> I don't want to create a rainbow project on git.sugarlabs.org myself because
> it might look like the "official" one.

Sascha, you're as much a rainbow maintainer these days as I am. Therefore,
please go ahead and create it, push your patches to it, and let me know when
you have patches that you want me to look at. Then we'll do a release and we'll
move on to the next set of patches.

Michael

[1]: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Network2