GSoC 2010 Progress Report #3

Last week I was developing a smart server for Darcs. The main challenge in designing a server was that the current code that works with the repository is rather low-level and work on file basis, and making it to work with the smart server is rather untrivial task.

To solve this problem, I implemented a common interface for working with both smart and dumb protocols, called RepoIO. RepoIO makes it easy to add new protocols for Darcs in the future, as well as provides a convenient high-level API for Darcs library users.

The disadvantage of this approach is the need for re-implementing of the download code (for example, at the moment RepoIO does not support HTTP pipelining). However, the current code for download needs refactoring anyway, and getting a clean API with a fresh realization in my opinion justifies the rewriting of some pieces of code.

At current moment changes to the pull command to work with RepoIO have been already made, and soon the first results of smart server's work will be seen. Next week I will finish the implementation of RepoIO for the dumb and smart protocols, as well as the implementation of the server part for CGI and local (to work via SSH). Together these changes will make a working realisation of smart server that is able to serve get and pull commands. Next Sunday I'll make my final report about the completed work.