[sugar] Develop Activity

[Ivan Krstić]

Eben Eliason wrote:
> One editing session may change a dozen different source files, yet 
> result in only one new journaled version.

The develop activity works on files directly on the actual
filesystem, and as such, the journal won't automatically track what it
does. That means the activity itself gets to choose what to journal, and
we have full flexibility there. It also means the bulk of the
activity development can be completed without worrying about the journal.

A number of people in the thread have speculated on a unification of the
journal and the filesystem, and I'd have to think that through, but I
get a bad vibe from it. Filesystems are well suited to things like
source code, and I'm not really comfortable trying to shoehorn bunches
of source in the journal, at least until we have a strong grip on how
we're doing general grouping in the journal (and can decide whether the
two models are compatible.)

Until then, it's important to keep in mind that the journal is not a
catch-all solution: it's a fantastically useful abstraction over the fs
for most user documents, but source code doesn't quite match that
definition.

-- 
Ivan Krstić <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D