storage options in subsurface

[Dirk Hohndel]

> On Jun 13, 2015, at 3:57 PM, Thomas 'Mike' Michlmayr <mike at cluon.priv.at> wrote:
> 
> hi!
> 
> from skimming the mailing list, i understand that subsurface is about to
> have three different ways of storing data:
> 
>   (1) local .xml file
>   (2) local git repo
>   (3) cloud storage (local git repo plus remote git repo)
> 
> i understand (1), and i've read dirk's mails on how (3) should work. i'm
> running into the same bug with the missing branch, so i can confirm that
> for me dirks procedure worked as far as it can work at the moment.

And I am digging hard to figure out how to fix that. But the right way
to initialize things is not exactly obvious (nor is the libgit2 documentation
especially helpful). I guess if you wrote the library (or git) that all makes
a lot of sense, but I'm still mostly lost.

> i'd love to play with (2), but i seem to have missed the mail that
> explains this and i don't seem to find the right buttons in subsurface.

This is intentionally undocumented. It's not for the faint of heart :-)

Create a new directory, let's say ~/mydives and create a git repository in there:

mkdir -p ~/mydives
cd ~/mydives
git init .

Then, in Subsurface, go to Save As and pick the ~ folder and use
mydives[Thomas]
as your filename. That magic format should be parsed correctly and
get Subsurface to store the data in a git repository.

You can go to that directory and look at what happened
cd ~/mydives
git show Thomas

BTW: the directory will look empty as by default we do NOT check
out the working tree...

> what i'm still trying to understand is how this is expected to work in
> the future (release time). what kind of choices will users have, and how
> will the manifest themselves in the UI?

(2) will continue to be undocumented intended for the developers

> will it be possible to move between storage options? does it still make
> sense to have the .xml file, or should that be an export/import only
> format?

Ideally I'd like to make (3) the default over time and use XML mostly
for export. The neat thing is the (3) uses (2) behind the curtain, i.e.
invisible and transparent to the user. Well, I should say, it SHOULD
do that... I won't release 4.5 until it does :-)

/D