Idea re: versioning on snippets/layouts vs content

[benstill]

Hi Jason,
first of all - a big thankyou for doing this extension. It looks very nice and I'm sure it will be useful for all of us.
I understand that you're planning on introducing versioning for snippets and layouts, as well as content. As I'm sure you're also aware, we've found versioning these becomes a big issue as soon as a Radiant site exceeds a certain size/complexity. And particularly when more than one person is working on it.
Our way (and probably lots of other folks) of resolving this has been to use the File System extension and Subversion (or Git). We've scoped the extension to just snippets and layouts (excludes content which stays as it is). The layouts and snippets live in Subversion, and when we deploy with Capistrano, they are raked in to whichever environment we deploy to.
So- I understand that in some cases having "Radiant versioning" on snippets and layouts would be useful. But for larger sites, using a developer's preferred version management tool can be an easier way of working. I'm not sure if you've already considered this, but it would be great if (when you do get around to versioning on snippets and layouts) either (1) the rake task is treated as just another change or (2) there is some way of keeping content versioned but ignore everything else.
Thanks again for such a great addition to Radiant.

regards

Ben

[jgarber]

"As I'm sure you're also aware, we've found versioning these becomes a big issue as soon as a Radiant site exceeds a certain size/complexity" ...I'm not aware! Do you just mean making big changes to a site (like a redesign) is cumbersome within Radiant? Or do you mean there are performance issues? Or something else entirely?

Part of my dream for this extension would be another extension that would provide a git interface to the versioned pages, snippets, and layouts. In other words, the file extension and git like you're doing, except no need for the rake task and pages, snippets, and layouts can be edited via either git or Radiant whenever because it's all instant. There's no copying/replacement of data like the File System extension does. The Radiant db is the git repository (or the git repository is the DB), so when you save a page/snippet/layout in Radiant, it's in the repo instantly. You can push, pull, merge... whatever. I'm imagining being able to edit pages/snippets/layouts in textmate on my local machine, commit, push... and it's live! You deal with merging and conflicts the same way you would on a busy code project. Make sense?

Now, I have no idea yet how to implement it. AR callbacks and git hooks? git_store? Some sort of git AR adapter? Seems like a fun challenge, but I'm not sure I'm the best person to take it on.

What do you think?