Scope
Ultimate goal: 3rd party software distribution
Key results:
- Virtual desks
- Tools to manipulate and inspect them
Background reading:
- Thread about 3rd party software distribution: https://groups.google.com/a/urbit.org/g/dev/c/zNK_-Z4gDNk/m/FM4PP2kxCAAJ
- Description of merge strategies: https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/729802102b788fd51e4e9afe8580b370f5119073/pkg/arvo/gen/hood/merge/help.txt
Step 1 is to build a simple tool to see the difference between desks. For an example of a file diff, try running -diff %/app/lens/hoon %/app/glob/hoon. Mainly, we want a recursive version of that, with options to display the full diff or just list the files which changed. Ideally we'd also have a 3-way diff, but that could be delayed.
Step 2 is the hard one: as described in that urbit-dev thread, add "virtual" desks to clay. These represent the continual merge of several other desks. Their main properties are:
- No committing directly to the desk, the only permitted manual modification is to change the list of source desks (including order and merge strategy)
- Every time a source desk is updated, the next commit is a brand new merge of all the source desks, in order according to their merge strategy. Possibly the previous version should also be listed as a parent.
- The list of source desks is ordered, includes a merge strategy, and each desk may be pinned to a revision.
Step 3 is to make the %home desk virtual. There should probably be another local desk which is a source of %home for local modifications. This step could be a bit finicky but shouldn't be too hard.
With these steps complete, the infrastructure side of 3rd party software distribution should be complete.
Future work:
- UI stuff
- Port forward pottery for debugging (https://github.com/urbit/pottery)
Compensation
- Parts 1 & 2: Two stars, one awarded after a month of work, another awarded after completion of Part 2.
- Part 3: One star awarded after one month of work, two additional stars awarded after completion of Part 3, which is completion of the project.
- Total: 5 stars for ~2.5 months of estimated work.
- "One month of work," if not resulting in a finished milestone, will be evaluated by the Tlon engineer working on the project with you for determination of reward eligibility.