On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 6:54 PM, Elliot Murphy <[email protected]> wrote: > 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.
I'm very happy that Ubuntu One is using CouchDB. I don't know enough about Debian packaging to understand that issue. It seems to me that `sudo apt-get install couchdb` should get me a CouchDB running on port 5984. It sounds like this is what you describe. On a side note, I've heard a lot of people ask how to get to the Couch that is running on their Ubuntu machine. I think making this dead simple will help dispel any notions of a fork (and encourage app development). I think per-user CouchDB's are a good idea. I'd like to see them implemented within Erlang, based on the Host header like httpd's name-based vhosts. Chris > > 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/ > -- Chris Anderson http://jchrisa.net http://couch.io
