[development] Real revision control system for nodes (was Re: Requiring node revisions)

[Fernando Silva]

Requires an external tool, in this case SVN.

It would be easy to implement if the current revision system would be
an optional module (making part of core) but not required to be always
"running".

Anyway, revisions should be an option, not a requirement.

Regards,
  Fernando

On 6/8/07, Derek Wright <drupal at dwwright.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 7, 2007, at 7:42 AM, Dries Buytaert wrote:
>
> > Still, the purist in me knows that such revisions will be 100%
> > useless and redundant even before they are created. Adding commas
> > might become a big deal. ;-)
>
> This same thought led me to write http://drupal.org/node/50682 way
> back then (my, how quickly d.o generated another 100,000 nodes) about
> using a real revision control system for node revisions. ;)  At the
> time, I was concerned with the inefficiency of storing entire copies
> of the nodes instead of just storing diffs like any sane revision
> system would (it was even worse in 4.6.x, since there was no separate
> table, just a giant serialized array of revisions directly in
> {node}).  But, if we're going to go through the trouble to implement
> a powerful revision system that stores and operates on diffs, why
> reinvent the wheel?  Wouldn't it be slick to have a php API for SVN
> that knew how to store things in any DB you wanted, not just Berkeley
> DB and flat files? (I don't know the state of the art with SVN's
> storage backends these days, though the front page of http://
> subversion.tigris.org still only lists those 2 options).  Then, you
> could just have all of SVN's power and functionality directly within
> the node revision system.  Branching your handbook?  Merging
> changes?  Editing content off line?  No problem.  Talk about the uber
> publishing site solution... ;)
>
> -Derek
>
>