Subject: Re: [PATCHv5 2/5] gitweb: Incremental blame (using JavaScript)

From: Petr Baudis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 21:22:03 +0100

Hi!

  Many thanks for nurturing this patch.

On Tue, Sep 01, 2009 at 01:39:17PM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> Roads not taken (perhaps that should be part of commit message?):
> * Move most (or all) of "git blame --incremental" output parsing to
>   server side, and instead of sending direct output in text/plain,
>   send processed data in JSON format, e.g.
> 
>     {"commit": {
>        "sha1": "e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290",
>        "info": "Kay Sievers, 2005-08-07 21:49:46 +0200",
>        "author-initials": "KS",
>        ...
>      },
>      "src-line": 13,
>      "dst-line": 16,
>      "numlines": 3,
>      "filename": "README"
>      }
> 
>   (line wrapping added for readibility).  This would require however
>   taking care on Perl side to send properly formatted JSON, and on
>   JavaScript side including json2.js code to read JSON in gitweb.js
>   (unless we rely on eval).

  I don't know that much about web programming, what is wrong with
relying on eval?

  (BTW, I have always thought that somewhat inevitable course in the
future will be to provide a web API, and basing it on JSON is probably
most natural choice. However, such an initiative needs to come from
actual web programmers.)

> * Using some lightweight JavaScript library (framework), like jQuery,
>   Prototype, ExtJS, MooTools, etc.  One one hand side this means not
>   having to worry about browser incompatibilities as this would be
>   taken care of by library; on the other hand side we want gitweb to
>   have as few dependences as possible.

  Normally, particular version of the library is simply included within
the project. E.g. in Girocco, I use MooTools for the tiny bit of
javascript I do. It is probably overkill to include it just for
incremental blame, but if we ever do much more, I think the much easier
web programming is worth the little trouble.

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
A lot of people have my books on their bookshelves.
That's the problem, they need to read them. -- Don Knuth