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[Stellation] Database and Win32 and the rest [message #16847]

Thu, 08 August 2002 17:12

Eclipse User

Hi,

Finally I had time to look after the stellation project.
It seems quite ambitious when I read the reasearch publications. I get
back to this point later.

The first thing I noticed is that the current RDB is postgres.
Unfortunately postgres is not easy to install at win32.
I also read that currently a number of external commands are used eg.
the linux diff, and that we should use cygwin to 'emulate' those
commands.
So my first 2 questions:
1 Can we support more databases?
2 What is needed to get a stellation server running on win32?

Concering 1, I would like to try firebird as another alternative
RDBMS. Its an open source port of Borlands interbase with the required
transaction support and jdbc drivers (still beta) and its is available
for win32,linux, solaris, and mac.
So are there any scripts to generate the db schema? Usally the syntax
to create tables is different as well as the available data types. Are
ther any more 'special' database features used (eg. oracle sequences,
triggers or funtions)?

I read (more a careful skimm) 2 of the reasearch publications. The
first one presents a system named Coven. Could one please explain
where stellation fits into? Is it aimed to be Coven or is it more the
'backend' repository (just a part)?
The, from my point of view, most exciting thing ist the virtual source
file construction. Is there already work done at this area?
Years ago I already read about this topic at Rodey Greens site,
[
http://www.mindprod.com/scid.html
http://www.mindprod.com/projdynamicversioncontrol.html
]
since this time, I am always interested on new things which could lead
to a system he describes. Stellation seems to be the closest thing I
saw till today.
So some more questions. I read from the JavaML project (sorry no link
handy, a markup language for java source code, it was on IBM developer
works) that it is very difficult to decompose text in smaller
fragments _and_ preserve all the whitespaces (linebreak, spaces) when
composing the fragements back to a whole. I worked with VAJ a lot and
only the later verisons, >=3.5 I believe, could do this in a good way.
Can stellation this already handle? This would be the most important
part to start, as the bigger part of us developers are used to see
source as flat text files and expect to see every char we type again
when using a SCM.
What is needed to store new, unknown textfiles? Eg. if I want to use
stellation with python source, what would be have to do, to split
python code in stellation fragments (just some sentences to get a
picture)?

I really appreciate your time, in answering some or even all of the
above questions, or giving pointers to existing information.

martin

Re: [Stellation] Database and Win32 and the rest [message #16914 is a reply to message #16847]

Fri, 09 August 2002 02:20

Eclipse User

Hi,

The JavaML URL:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/gjb/JavaML/

Francesc

P.S.: Thanks, Martin!

Martin Möbius wrote:

> Hi,

> Finally I had time to look after the stellation project.
> It seems quite ambitious when I read the reasearch publications. I get
> back to this point later.

> The first thing I noticed is that the current RDB is postgres.
> Unfortunately postgres is not easy to install at win32.
> I also read that currently a number of external commands are used eg.
> the linux diff, and that we should use cygwin to 'emulate' those
> commands.
> So my first 2 questions:
> 1 Can we support more databases?
> 2 What is needed to get a stellation server running on win32?

> Concering 1, I would like to try firebird as another alternative
> RDBMS. Its an open source port of Borlands interbase with the required
> transaction support and jdbc drivers (still beta) and its is available
> for win32,linux, solaris, and mac.
> So are there any scripts to generate the db schema? Usally the syntax
> to create tables is different as well as the available data types. Are
> ther any more 'special' database features used (eg. oracle sequences,
> triggers or funtions)?

> I read (more a careful skimm) 2 of the reasearch publications. The
> first one presents a system named Coven. Could one please explain
> where stellation fits into? Is it aimed to be Coven or is it more the
> 'backend' repository (just a part)?
> The, from my point of view, most exciting thing ist the virtual source
> file construction. Is there already work done at this area?
> Years ago I already read about this topic at Rodey Greens site,
> [
> http://www.mindprod.com/scid.html
> http://www.mindprod.com/projdynamicversioncontrol.html
> ]
> since this time, I am always interested on new things which could lead
> to a system he describes. Stellation seems to be the closest thing I
> saw till today.
> So some more questions. I read from the JavaML project (sorry no link
> handy, a markup language for java source code, it was on IBM developer
> works) that it is very difficult to decompose text in smaller
> fragments _and_ preserve all the whitespaces (linebreak, spaces) when
> composing the fragements back to a whole. I worked with VAJ a lot and
> only the later verisons, >=3.5 I believe, could do this in a good way.
> Can stellation this already handle? This would be the most important
> part to start, as the bigger part of us developers are used to see
> source as flat text files and expect to see every char we type again
> when using a SCM.
> What is needed to store new, unknown textfiles? Eg. if I want to use
> stellation with python source, what would be have to do, to split
> python code in stellation fragments (just some sentences to get a
> picture)?

> I really appreciate your time, in answering some or even all of the
> above questions, or giving pointers to existing information.

> martin

Re: [Stellation] Database and Win32 and the rest [message #16943 is a reply to message #16847]

Fri, 09 August 2002 02:20

Eclipse User

Re: [Stellation] Database and Win32 and the rest [message #17002 is a reply to message #16847]

Fri, 09 August 2002 07:06

Eclipse User

On Thu, 08 Aug 2002 21:12:38 +0000, Martin Möbius wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Finally I had time to look after the stellation project. It seems quite
> ambitious when I read the reasearch publications. I get back to this
> point later.
>
> The first thing I noticed is that the current RDB is postgres.
> Unfortunately postgres is not easy to install at win32. I also read that
> currently a number of external commands are used eg. the linux diff, and
> that we should use cygwin to 'emulate' those commands. So my first 2
> questions:
> 1 Can we support more databases?

Yes. There is a mostly working DB2 port, and Ringo DeSmet has a
working implementation for Oracle on win32.

> 2 What is needed to get a stellation server running on win32?

Use the Oracle version :-).

Ringo has done a lot to get things working on win32. I don't think he's
written any docs for it yet. It's still work in progress.

>
> Concering 1, I would like to try firebird as another alternative RDBMS.
> Its an open source port of Borlands interbase with the required
> transaction support and jdbc drivers (still beta) and its is available
> for win32,linux, solaris, and mac.

We've had a *lot* of suggestions for alternative databases. We're
looking at something to replace postgres, but there's been no decision
about what we'd like to switch to. Suggestions have included Interbase,
SAPDB, MySQL/InnoDB, and a few others that I can't recall at the moment.

> So are there any scripts to generate the db schema? Usally the syntax to
> create tables is different as well as the available data types. Are ther
> any more 'special' database features used (eg. oracle sequences,
> triggers or funtions)?

There are no scripts, but it's not hard to port. We do some datatype
parameterization to make it easy to switch to other databases, and
as we learn what needs to be done to support other databases, we'll
do more.

> I read (more a careful skimm) 2 of the reasearch publications. The first
> one presents a system named Coven. Could one please explain where
> stellation fits into? Is it aimed to be Coven or is it more the
> 'backend' repository (just a part)?

Coven was the original name of the Stellation project. It turned out
that there was a related project named Coven that predated us, so
we needed to change the name. For the purposes of that paper,
Coven == Stellation.

> The, from my point of view, most exciting thing ist the virtual source
> file construction. Is there already work done at this area? Years ago I
> already read about this topic at Rodey Greens site, [
> http://www.mindprod.com/scid.html
> http://www.mindprod.com/projdynamicversioncontrol.html ]

There was a project at CMU called Gwydion that did this sort of thing.
Steven Reiss at Brown University implemented a tool called, I think,
Desert that did very similar stuff.

since this
> time, I am always interested on new things which could lead to a system
> he describes. Stellation seems to be the closest thing I saw till today.
> So some more questions. I read from the JavaML project (sorry no link
> handy, a markup language for java source code, it was on IBM developer
> works) that it is very difficult to decompose text in smaller fragments
> _and_ preserve all the whitespaces (linebreak, spaces) when composing
> the fragements back to a whole. I worked with VAJ a lot and only the
> later verisons, >=3.5 I believe, could do this in a good way. Can
> stellation this already handle? This would be the most important part to
> start, as the bigger part of us developers are used to see source as
> flat text files and expect to see every char we type again when using a
> SCM.

This is functionality that we haven't yet implemented. But yes, we
will get that right. How hard it is depends on what your storage
method is. If you store code as ASTs, it's really hard to preserve
precise layout structure. If you store code as text, it's not hard
to preserve whitespace.

> What is needed to store new, unknown textfiles? Eg. if I want to use
> stellation with python source, what would be have to do, to split python
> code in stellation fragments (just some sentences to get a picture)?

There will be interfaces plug-in components that have the ability to identify
the boundaries between declarations in a given language. To support
a new language, you'll need to implement the plugin component for
the syntax of the new language. We'll do our best to make it as easy
as possible to implement these components. (It's my intuition that
there's probably a two-step way of implementing it that makes it
easy: a regular expression system (you supply the regexp for your
language) that identifies likely candidates for declaration
boundaries, and then more precise test code (again, you supply it)
to check the regexp selected candidates.

-Mark

--
Mark Craig Chu-Carroll, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
*** The Stellation project: Advanced SCM for Collaboration
*** http://www.eclipse.org/stellation
*** Work Email: mcc@watson.ibm.com ------- Personal Email: markcc@bestweb.net

Re: [Stellation] Database and Win32 and the rest [message #17116 is a reply to message #17002]

Sat, 10 August 2002 04:32

Eclipse User

Mark C. Chu-Carroll wrote:

> Yes. There is a mostly working DB2 port, and Ringo DeSmet has a
> working implementation for Oracle on win32.

> > 2 What is needed to get a stellation server running on win32?

> Use the Oracle version :-).

> Ringo has done a lot to get things working on win32. I don't think he's
> written any docs for it yet. It's still work in progress.

So best will be, to get on the mailinglist. The problem with oracle (I
just heard) is that it need a lot of resources.

> We've had a *lot* of suggestions for alternative databases. We're
> looking at something to replace postgres, but there's been no decision
> about what we'd like to switch to. Suggestions have included Interbase,
> SAPDB, MySQL/InnoDB, and a few others that I can't recall at the moment.

All the usual suspects ;).

> > The, from my point of view, most exciting thing ist the virtual source
> > file construction. Is there already work done at this area? Years ago I
> > already read about this topic at Rodey Greens site, [
> > http://www.mindprod.com/scid.html
> > http://www.mindprod.com/projdynamicversioncontrol.html ]

> There was a project at CMU called Gwydion that did this sort of thing.
> Steven Reiss at Brown University implemented a tool called, I think,
> Desert that did very similar stuff.

Thank for your pointers.

[snipped big pictures to support arbitary languages]

Again thanks a lot for your time. Best seems to get in contact with Ringo
at the mailing list.

martin

Re: [Stellation] Database and Win32 and the rest [message #572452 is a reply to message #16847]

Fri, 09 August 2002 02:20

Eclipse User