Git-based Backend

[samyok]

Problem

Currently, Musicblock's planet has a basic forking system. In order to better serve the purpose of Musicblocks and its Planet, a Git-based planet (wherein users could commit, open/clone projects, merge, fork, and create PRs) would be a useful feature.

Idea: Node-based planet rewrite

• Architecture:
  • NodeJS with a MongoDB backend
  • Use actual git repos for every project (in a subdirectory) using NodeGit -- git repos would be modified ProjectData JSON to allow better merging, no change to core Musicblocks code
  • Pros:
    • Language Parity: all the Musicblocks code, including server, will be in JS, rather than JS and PHP
    • Scalable and maintainable: everything can be modularized pretty well and will last as long as we have disk space to support
    • Mongo's document-based database works perfectly with the amount of data that's going to be generated specific to each project
  • Cons:
    • Not much

Implementation

1. Rewrite:
   • Create HTML mockups of all the changes (proposed changes here)
   • Rewrite non-changed Planet features in NodeJS (such as downloading/uploading projects, searching, tags, etc)
2. Implement New Features:
   • Anonymous user IDs and groups
   • Implement (backend + frontend) project commits
   • Forking other projects
   • Branching your own project
   • Merging branches/projects
3. Continue rewrite: moderation features
   • Mod Login + current moderation features
   • More detailed features too: remove branches and do other actions on behalf of the user
4. Cleanup
   • Documentation (i.e. setting up server, general architecture, etc.). Code documentation would be written as we go along :)
   • Docker image(?)

My UX idea can be found here, but open to comments :)

[pikurasa]

I believe there was some work toward this as a GSoC (2018? 2019?) project. I recommend you review that work.

[walterbender]

@perriefidelis Can you look at this from the UX POV?

[perriefidelis]

I dropped some comments on the google docs

[Bottersnike]

I'm not entirely sold on using git. Diffing between two JSON files, and storing those diffs in a database, can be performed trivially without git, and also without the large overhead that comes from creating an entire new git repository per project. I really like the idea of being able to track changes and branch new projects off others, but I'm not sure if git is the correct tool for the job.