Automatic discovery of new branches

To clarify, I think Jelmer would like the ability to register a Branch Collection (tentative name).

The use case is: automatically register all the branches I push to this public location.

A collection would specify a URL, and Launchpad would regularly check this URL for new branches. In the common case of HTTP, this would have to yield an html page pointing to children URLs (typically, an index page), but Launchpad should be able to get directory listing using WebDAV or FTP.

Each children URL would be inspected, and if any of them contains a bzr branch that is not already registered, it would be registered automatically on behalf the owner of the collection.

A collection should also be able to specify a "product" and an "author" to use in new branches.

Open issues:
 * Should the listing be recursive? At first, I'd say no: only register direct children of the collection URL.
 * What to do if the automatic branch name (last step of the branch URL) conflicts with an existing branch by the same owner in the same product?
 * What to do if an URL that was previously a bzr branch, and got automatically registered, is no longer an accessible branch?

The use case is compelling, but I am not sure automatic discovery is the right approach to address it. I mean it: I do not think it is wrong, but I am undecided.

On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 13:03 +0000, David Allouche wrote:
> To clarify, I think Jelmer would like the ability to register a Branch
> Collection (tentative name).

> The use case is: automatically register all the branches I push to this
> public location.
Yep, exactly - a changing branch collection. It would have to track
changes in the branch collection once first registered.

> Open issues:
> * Should the listing be recursive? At first, I'd say no: only register direct children of the collection URL.
Agreed. Recursively could be more easily prone to DoS attacks and I
think there's no real use case for more than one level of branches
anyway.

Cheers,

Jelmer