4 ms·

Is anyone interested in developing an email-based VCS?

3 points by saltypretzels 10y ago

I think there is a gap in the VCS world. Git and TortoiseHg use similiar commands and are both kind of hard to use sometimes. Despite the cult-like glee of vocal git users there is discontent out there. I've asked on different forums and its usually not hard to find people who do not like git at all if you explain yourself clearly. I'll also offer some of my favorite anti-git links. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDeG4S-mJts, http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/enough-git/, https://stevebennett.me/2012/02/24/10-things-i-hate-about-git/ Without a doubt the majority of people who reply will defend git. I'm not talking to them, they do what they're told anyhow. So the idea is really simple. It just uses your email as the repository. When you want to commit it attaches the differences and emails them to you. Configuration shouldn't be much more complicated than setting up an email client. I want to copy how TortoiseHg does a lot of its work through the right click context menu. There will be no command line. Everything should be dead simple and out of the way. If it doesn't fit in the context menu it's scope creep. Also it's got to work identical on Ubuntu and Windows. I think I can do all that. Where I could use the most help is with the diff tool. VSCode has a beautiful diff tool. A lot of diff tools are ancient. I'm not going to use an external diff tool. It's just got to be a simple text editor with red and green lines that doesn't look like it was made a hundred years ago. I'm not against reinventing the wheel if we can think of a better way to do diffs and merges. Anyone interested?

dozzie 10y ago
If there will only be GUI, it won't fly. All of the popular VCS-es (and many of the formerly popular ones) have command line, and for good reasons. There's too many operations to fit in a GUI. Then, you set yourself to write for Windows and Ubuntu only. You're forgetting all the rest of the Linux users (it's quite easy to write something that will only run on Ubuntu and not on Debian), BSD users, and OSX users. This is a very bad attitude. Next, I can't see how this is supposed to work or fit a programmer's workflow, but it may be just me. I don't see how it would operate with an e-mail client (or maybe it's supposed to be an e-mail client itself?) > Configuration shouldn't be much more complicated than setting up an email client. Setting up an e-mail client is a quite complicated thing. Setting up a git repository is quite easy, on the other hand. I don't see how this is win.
- saltypretzels 10y ago
  It kind of looks like you took every statement I made and your only goal was to find a way to disagree with it.
  - dozzie 10y ago
    Now, are my comments valid? If yes, then what does it say about your idea? If no, why?
    - saltypretzels 10y ago
      I don't know what you mean by valid. Everything you said I either disagree with or you actually weren't making a valid argument. I just didn't want to play this game with you.
      - dozzie 10y ago
        So you basically refuse to explain how you plan to fix any of the holes I poked in your idea. Your call, but don't expect much excitement if you can't explain the idea in a coherent way.
        dang 10y ago
        You're acting like a bully here. Please don't do this on Hacker News, regardless of how right your points are. Instead, please be a good conversationalist. This is a community, not a shooting range.
colonelpopcorn 10y ago
TortoiseGit, GitKraken, and the myriad of other Git GUIs are your friend.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
imauld 10y ago
Would you also be doing code reviews/pull requests in an email client? Being completely honest, that sounds terrible. How would rebases work? Cherry-picking? Reverts? Email clients were build to send emails not to be VCS repos. It seems like you would be bending an existing tool to do a job that is already handled by specialized tool.
dosnlinux 10y ago
Take a look at GitHub desktop (https://desktop.github.com/ https://desktop.github.com/) I think it would be better to just have a simpler GUI for a VCS that looks and feels more like an email client. Commits would show up as a list like email summaries and opening them up would maybe show the full diff. Branches would show up as a an email thread/conversation. Maybe extra logging details like "so and so has seen your commit" or "person A resolved a conflict here's the conflict state and how they merged it". Files involved in the commit would look like they are attachments and "downloading" the attachment would really just open the file at that commit. ...Searching for stuff is probably important to your workflow? ...I'm not the target market, but I get it. I hate email based workflows, and I could send a couple of email critiques too ;) I think this would work best with those working on smaller projects with maybe one or two other collaborators that do not make changes at the same time. I make changes, other person looks at the changes, maybe makes some corrections and sends it back. Maybe there are some people that just want to be notified of updates. I want to say that your target user's primary responsibility isn't programming. Maybe a designer, sysadmin, or researcher? ...Someone who writes a few scripts here or there.