Repo on an USB drive: Multiple configs, same machine, different "whoamis", repo without working copy?

Question

First of all, sorry for that title. I know it looks like abunch of questions, and it is. Some of them are somewhat relatetd to the comments on FAQ item 195. Let me explain my situation: I work from different (Windows) machines (Laptop, PC, Netbook,...), carrying around my data on an USB pen drive. I don't have it with me all the time, but I'd like to be able to work on my code and/or todo-list/bug-tracker etc. whenever I am at one of those machines. So I would like to use veracity the following way: - One instance of Veracity, one repo and one or more working copies on each machine - One repo without working copy on the USB pen drive

I had the same thing runnig with git quite well, but git has no support for bug tracking, so I want to switch to veracity. To be able to quickly install my working environment on any machine from the UBS pen drive, I would like to have veracity on it, too, together with msys and some other tools. My questions are now:

Where is the configuration stored? Is it possible to run for example F:msysmsys.exe shell as whoami "admin", using veracity configuration data stored in F:, and another C:msysmsys.exe shell as whoami "arne", using veracity configuration data stored on the local machine? That means, same windows user, different veracity users? I extracted the zip file once, played around a bit with veracity, deleted it and extracted it again in another location. It seems something of the previous configuration survived, at least the server/files entry is the one from the first installation, and it seems to have two admin users right now.
Is it possible to have a repository without any working directory? As far as i can see from the faq here, vv init creates a repo AND a working copy, although the command line help says optional wc.

Regards, Arne

Accepted Answer

How can you change the closet's location?

That's discussed here: How can I change the location of sgcloset?

Short version: use the SGCLOSET environment variable.

Using different closets for different users

Per your "one user running off a local instance, one running off a thumb drive instance": yes, that can work. In one of your console windows, set SGCLOSET to point to the thumb drive. You'll have the whoami user as set there, as well as access to all those repo instances.

In the other window, leave SGCLOSET unset to use the default local closet. Local whoami user and local repo instances are available here.

If you need to sync the local and thumb drive instances, run vv serve in one of the windows, and use vv push and vv pull against http://localhost:8080 in the other window.

Using the same closet for multiple (simultaneous) users

That isn't going to work out well for you. As you've seen, configuration details like 'whoami' are stored in the closet.

Repositories without working folders

vv repo new is what you're after here. To create users in that repo, either check it out somewhere and use vv user and vv whoami from within the working folder, or use the --repo argument in either of those commands to add them from anywhere.

$ vv repo new repowithnowf
$ vv whoami --repo=repowithnowf --create anewuser
$ vv user list --repo=repowithnowf
anewuser
    g2ef6527566ac4cee9de890eb771b9b18d827d746072511e19944c8bcc8e13b9a

Repos on a pen drive

Doable, with caution, by setting your closet location (as linked above) to point to a closet directory on the thumb drive. We haven't tested this scenario at all, however I have happily copied closets from machine to machine with some success.

As it stands, though, the closet is not going to be happy if its path changes from machine to machine; the USB drive needs to mount in the same location (drive letter on Windows) on each box. If it's F: on machine 1, and E: on machine 2, you're out of luck. We'll probably address that in the future, but it's not on the immediate horizon.

Answer 2

1

Update: I have solved the path-stored-in-the-closet problem as described in my last answer to the "path_parent_dir" issue. So I should be able to set up my pen drive closet in the near future. I'll report the progress :-)

link

answered Mar 02 at 04:08

Arne Mertz
520●6●15●29

Closet is set, including two scripts to serve the closet and get a MSYS shell with the correct environment. Getting a copy on any Windows machine is easy:
I copy the Veracity folder (includes MSYS and the scripts) from the pen drive to the local machine, run the serve-script on the pen drive and start the local copy of the script for the msys-shell. Then I call 'vv clone http://localhost:8080/repos/MyRepo' in that shell and I am good to work on that Windows machine with or without the pen drive plugged in :)

(Mar 25 at 05:04) Arne Mertz

Answer 3

By "MSYS shell", I assume you mean the package described on: http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS

We've not used package, so I can't say much of anything about how it works. (I have used Cygwin, so that'll color my comments.) If it is like Cygwin, you need a DLL installed and programs need to link against it in order to make use of "cygwin-style" pathnames. So things like the mount points (and full pathnames using them) that you describe would only be visible to applications that use the DLL routines for file system access, right?

Inside Veracity on Windows we use the native Win32 file system routines for all file system access. We normalize all pathnames to either have "letter:path" or "//host/share/path". So we won't know anything about any of these mount points unless they are fully visible to any process (regardless of linkage) on the system using one of the above formats.

To get back to your original question, I think you'd do best with:

A normal CLOSET setup and one or more working directories on each machine. Keep in mind that Veracity stores the DB and stuff in the closet rather than inside a .git or .hg like directory inside each working directory. (I say that because I don't think you want to move your closet to the thumb drive, because then you can't work on a machine without it.)
All of your regular commits are stored in the normal closet.
Run a local server on the regular closet and view and manipulate work items with a local browser.

Then for the thumb drive (and assuming that the normal local server is still running (on the normal closet)):

Have a second CLOSET set up on your thumb drive. (With or without any working directories, it doesn't matter.)
CLONE each of the repos that you want to carry around into the thumb drive's closet by requesting them from the local server. (This is a one time set-up step.)
When you plug in the thumb drive, have a shell script to use the thumb drive's closet and PUSH changes to the local server.
Then in your various local working directories, UPDATE and/or MERGE to get the latest incoming changes (using the normal/regular closet) and then work as usual.
Before you unplug your thumb drive, have a shell script to use the thumb drive's closet and PULL changes from the local server.

This method has the advantage that no fancy pathname tricks are required and you will always have N+1 copies of the repo DBs.