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> 1. Is there a protocol specification for source control (like OStatus or ActivityPub but for communicating with a source control server)? Yes - each SCM has

> 1. Is there a protocol specification for source control (like OStatus or ActivityPub but for communicating with a source control server)? Yes - each SCM has at least one protocol. Here's the spec for subversion, https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/subversion/libsvn_ra_svn/protocol https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/subversion... , here's the spec for Git: https://github.com/git/git/blob/9bfa0f9be3e718f701200a242ea04259a4dc4dfc/Documentation/technical/protocol-v2.txt https://github.com/git/git/blob/9bfa0f9be3e718f701200a242ea0... > 2. If not, can we create one with a name like Open Version Control (OVC for short)? Unlikely. Each SCM operates in their own way that might be completely at odds with how another SCM works. Also the union of people that have the ability to do it and the incentive to do it is pretty much zero. >3. Can we then agree on what constitutes the necessary data for a commit, push, user info, etc Unlikely. See 2.

parvenu74 8y ago
Perhaps the nomenclature of "protocol specification" is ambiguous as it seems you're referring to wire protocols. I was thinking more along the idea of defining contracts for "What are the required data attributes for a merge?" or "What are the required attributes -- both in terms of defining the changeset and the user info for the user proposing the PR -- for a pull request?" The reference to "Making Linus happy" is from an interview where he explained that he won't take kernel PRs via GitHub because the user info metadata is different. I don't see why this cannot all be standardized and the various communities can write contract-compliant servers and clients for an agreed-upon distributed version control system.