15 Dec
2024
15 Dec
'24
8:31 p.m.
On Sun, Dec 15, 2024 at 03:34:47AM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
Try rereading it a few times. And work through the various versions of
the history file I wrote out. Everything you need to understand is right
there. I get that it isn't easy, but it isn't that hard either.
> > 2.
"TeamWare and BitKeeper took advantage of the interleaved
> > delta algorithm, also known as a weave, to implement an
> > efficient way to represent merged deltas by reference, instead
> > of reproducing code inside the repository. This is a lot more
> > complicated to do with reverse deltas, introduced by RCS.*"
> >
> > I'd a like a second footnote directing me to where I can
> > understand the mathematics supporting this claim. Just out of
> > nerd interest.
>
> See if this helps:
>
> https://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2024-December/031188.html
I saw that, and it sheds some light, but it doesn't rise to the level of
a theorem. If I were a mathematician, I might know what
analytical discipline to
bring to bear on my question to you, but the best I can do is to mumble
about how it looks like you need both graph theory and set theory for
this.
You need to be able to visualize a graph, yes. And Rick would agree you
need some education to _really_ understand everything. I'd argue you need
very little to get the basics.
Remember, the claim is that an automerge is a set thing only, no changes
to the weave. I demonstrated that.
A good mathematical expositor could, I add, employ
these tools without
leaning too hard on the formalisms, and produce a writeup that is
broadly accessible.
We used to have USENIX for this sort of thing...
Indeed. And if USENIX were still a thing, I might write that paper. I'm
not particularly motivated. I participated in a 3 day SCM something a
while back, put on by google and facebook. I spent 3 days listening to
their problems, and on most of them, I said "yeah, we solved that, here
is what we did". And then watched while they ignored everything.
So I'm not hopeful that people will get it. If I were younger, I might
write the paper anyway but I'm not. I tried, BK is open source, you can
go read the code (I know of one guy who did and came back claiming it was
the most pleasant C source base he had ever seen, but that's it. Noone
else has said boo).
I've noted your enthusiasm for the weave and
BK's amplification of the
concept. What I think you need is, as noted, a mathematical expositor
who can express the novelty of Rochkind's and your contributions in
terms that professionals who have little contact with the problems of
"source code configuration management" (an alternative nomenclature for
"version control" I've encountered) can comprehend. You've tried
popularizing to the masses. My conclusion is that, at best, they stare
slackly at you and say, "Git does that. I use Git.". To get your
innovation more broadly recognized, you may therefore have to take your
case to the ivory tower.
You're almost there. What they say is "I use Github". Github has
dumbed down DVCS to the point they aren't much different than CVS.
When I realized that years ago, I retired. My belief is BK is sort of
like betamax, it's better but VHS won. It is what it is.