Re: Confusing terminology between usher and monotone and proposed change

On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 10:42:41AM +0200, Richard Levitte wrote:
> I've had a closer look at the terminology used in usher and in
> monotone, and there is a part that's quite confusing:
> 
> In usher terminology, different databases are served by different
> monotone server, and therefore, the URI to access them through a
> server name would be expressed as mtn://HOST/SERVER?PATTERN.
> 
> In monotone terminology, the same URI is expressed as
> mtn://HOST/PATH?PATTERN.
> 
> Furthermore, usher is a server in its own right, so when talking about
> the usher+monotone combination, it might be confusing to talk about a
> server, as it might not always be clear if you're talking about the
> usher server itself or one of the underlying monotone servers.
> 
> Also, in usherctl, the confusion is increased, since it uses PROJECT
> to designate what usher calls SERVER and monotone calls PATH.  This is
> confusing since monotone has another idea of what a project is, and
> will just increase as soon as policy branches are in place.
> 
> 
> To clear the confusion, I propose that we make a terminology change in
> usher, where the term SERVER (to designate a monotone server entry in
> the usher configuration) be changed to PATH (with the implicit
> understanding that a PATH is then served by the monotone server in
> said entry).

This would presumably be the server name in the "server" line.  The 
"foo" in 
    server "foo"

But the word "path" is in common usage to a sequence of directory names 
separated by slashes, possibly ending in a file name.

This still leaves room for confusion, since (unless I'm grossly 
confused) it's not the file name of the data base that's wanted here.

-- hendrik

>  This makes it clear how it corresponds to what's in the
> monotone documentation and leaves less (if any) confusion about what
> server you're talking about in different contexts.  And frankly, I
> like the ring of it ;-)
> 
> The proposed changed involves having the key 'server' be replaced by
> 'path' in usher's configuration file.  Of course, usher should still
> understand the key 'server' for a while (say, until 2.0), but will
> then tell the user that it's deprecated and should be replaced.
> usherctl will be changed in a corresponding way.
> 
> This should be implemented before releasing usher 1.0.
> 
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Cheers,
> Richard ( my main focus in the nearest future will be to implement
> that change, as well as changing the test structure (already working
> on it) )
> 
> -- 
> Richard Levitte                         [email protected]
>                                         http://richard.levitte.org/
> 
> "Life is a tremendous celebration - and I'm invited!"
> -- from a friend's blog, translated from Swedish
> 
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