[MLton] library naming

[Adam Goode]

Stephen Weeks wrote:
...
> Not making code public misses out on the chance to share and the 
> chance to collaborate.  Having a namespace of your own on a public 
> server encourages sharing.
...
> 
> It really isn't a library.  I do want the infrastructure to support
> an "ad-hoc collection of various people's libraries".  I would be
> happy to have anyone's library in there.
...
> The naming proposal was aimed at even removing the barrier of 
> requiring SVN commit access (although I intend to be liberal with 
> that).  It allows people to work on libraries in another repository 
> and not worry about stepping on toes.  Further, it allows users to 
> draw code from different repositories and combine them into one local
> repository, and greatly reduce the chance of conflicts.


It sounds like you are describing a decentralized development model with
a goal of allowing easy combinations and merges of libraries.

Maybe the centralized nature of Subversion is not the right model here?

I think Subversion works quite well for the development of MLton, which
is inherently centralized, but perhaps something like git would be a
better way to encourage the kind of "anarchic structure" desired for
this library project.

git works because it allows everyone to hack away at their own code,
easily fork someone else's code, and then merge changes back to
upstream. It works well for the Linux kernel and X because those are
huge projects where you basically do a fork to develop your
implementation of things (with tracking of local revisions), then at
some point you release your changes back up.

As a bonus, git also works when totally offline. (How many times have
you hacked away at libraries on an airplane and wished you could check
in changes as you go?)

Any thoughts? Questions about git? How familiar is git to everyone? I
know it's introducing a totally new version control system to the MLton
project, but the library project is a new direction for MLton and may
have some unique needs.


For reference, here is kernel.org's gitweb and its many trees:
http://www.kernel.org/git/

Here is freedesktop.org's gitweb (home of X and other projects):
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/


Thanks,

Adam

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