Hi, This is just a concept. It would be nice, to see it become reality, though.
In my opinion it shows how the Hurd makes complex concepts easy. You could also call it read/write web ;) It is still untested, though. Goal ------ Being able to edit any website in the web, see the changes locally and share it with others. Example: On his statitc site, HurdJoker writes the latest Duke Nukem Forever. I want to add a link with info about our usability report, and I want those who trust me to see my comment. Used technology -------------- translators: - hostmux with httpfs to get all websites into the filesystem. - unionfs to mount a local tree over the web. - hgmerger (Mercurial integration doesn’t exist yet) to check websites and commit and merge my versions. Approach ----------- Websites are being accessed via /http://… using the hostmux translator with httpfs. So we have a filesystem tree of the http sites. The unionfs mounts a local tree over it. All writes are redirected to the local tree. The same goes for all reads to file which exist in the local tree. hgmerger sits on that local tree. When a file is read in the local tree, hgmerger gets its equivalent from the bare http tree, commits that and merges it with the local changes. To make it simple, we can use the following layout: /http://* - the real web ~/.http://* - the overlay ~/.bare-http://* - incoming changes. ### Reading websites When a site is read which also exists in ~/.http*, the hgmerger first copies the site from /http* to ~/.bare-http* and commits it. Then it pulls the changes from ~/.bare-http* into ~/.http* and merges them with the local tree. In case of conflict, the bare site wins (to make sure that merges always work). Additionally ~/.bare-http* uses a named branch: "bare". That way, ~/.http* can be shared with others who can then clone the "bare" branch on ~/.http-bare*. ### Writing to websites When a site is edited and then saved, hgmerger first copies its unchanged version (from /http*) to ~/.bare-http*. Then it merges the bare copy into ~/.http*. Now it writes the changed file to ~/.http* and commits. unionfs and the selective reading for changed files ensure, that I’ll see the changed version from now on. At this point, the mercurial repository in ~/.http* can be shared on the web and people can pull from it to get my changes to websites. Conclusion --------- The hostmux and httpfs translator in the Hurd make it extremely easy to get the internet into the filesystem. Using unionfs and Mercurial, the filesystem tree can then easily be given a transparent editing layer which can be shared with everyone else. No need anymore to add comment sections to static websites. You have a builtin editing overlay right in your system – hooked into the very http grabber. Note: using Git or Bazaar instead of Mercurial should not change the workflow in any relevant way. So, for those brave souls who followed me till here :) : what do you think about the concept? Does it show the strength of the Hurd as I think it does? And would you also love to have this kind of shared decentral read/write web? :) Best wishes, Arne
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
