Hi! In Debian there is a debate about whether to accept one of the packaging changes that was made to CouchDB in Ubuntu: splitting the init script into a package called couchdb, and the rest of the binary files into a package called couchdb-bin. This allows Ubuntu to avoid the system-wide CouchDB being started during boot of a default desktop/netbook install, while still allowing Ubuntu One to make use of per-user CouchDB instances. I am seeing an argument claiming that CouchDB development "does not support" per-user couchdb instances, and claims that the work done in Ubuntu to allow per-user instances of CouchDB to be started on demand without ever starting a system-wide CouchDB instance is a fork. I am baffled by the claim, but it persists.
The Ubuntu One team has built a library called desktopcouch https://edge.launchpad.net/desktopcouch, with some specifications about how desktop applications should store and share records in CouchDB http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktopcouch. Desktopcouch exposes a D-BUS service which takes care of starting a per-user instance of CouchDB on an ephemeral port, putting log files in the right place, and configuring OAuth. We've contracted with some CouchDB developers to make various enhancements to CouchDB to support this. We've also integrated Evolution, Firefox, and Tomboy with CouchDB (via desktopcouch), and are encouraging adoption of CouchDB by Getting Things Gnome, Gwibber, and submitted patches to Raindrop to use desktopcouch rather than a system-wide instance. Additionally, applications developed using the Quickly tool automatically store their preferences via desktopcouch, and have easy Gtk widgets which persist data to CouchDB, and we've built a GUI tool for pairing CouchDB systems between desktops to make it trivially easy for folks to set up their own replication. We haven't yet written conflict or merge widgets, but plan to soon. It was my impression that this use of CouchDB by Ubuntu One and desktopcouch was accepted and supported and not at odds with the core CouchDB development team - certainly not a fork. If anyone on the PMC objects to the desktopcouch project and what I've described here, could you let me know? -- Elliot Murphy | https://launchpad.net/~statik/
