html/mob.html

   1 @section=site guide
   2 @heading=About the Mob Account
   3 @header
   4
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   6
   7
   8 <p>The <tt>mob</tt> account (the name a tribute to the paper
   9 <a href="http://www.dreamsongs.com/MobSoftware.html">Mob Software: The Erotic Life of Code</a>)
  10 is.a way to enable <em>anonymous push access</em> for your project.
  11 This is largely an experiment and may be scrapped in the future if
  12 it will not get widespread use, but we think it's an interesting try.
  13 The idea is to provide unmoderated <em>side</em> channel for random
  14 contributors to work on a project, with similar rationale as
  15 e.g. Wikipedia - that given enough interested people, the quality
  16 will grow rapidly and occassional "vandalism" will get fixed quickly.
  17 Of course this may not work nearly as well for software, but here
  18 we are, to give it a try.</p>
  19
  20 <h2>For Repository Admins</h2>
  21
  22 <p>How it works? First, you need to add the <tt>mob</tt> user to the
  23 list of users allowed to push in your project. <tt>mob</tt> is a
  24 keyless, passwordless user that anyone can use to push, without
  25 any special setup. <strong>But</strong> this does not mean that
  26 your project is now in the hands of raging mindless mob! The <tt>mob</tt>
  27 user has a special restriction: it can push only to an existing
  28 <tt>mob</tt> branch. This means that the second step you need to take
  29 is to create a <tt>mob</tt> branch in the repository (e.g.
  30 <code>git checkout -b mob
  31         &amp;&amp; git push origin mob</code>). Then the <tt>mob</tt> user
  32 will be able to push to this and only this branch, and it won't be
  33 able to push whatsoever until you take the second step.</p>
  34
  35 <p>To sum it up: Anonymous pushes are allowed <em>only</em> to the <tt>mob</tt>
  36 branch and <em>only</em> if you add a <tt>mob</tt> user and do an initial
  37 pushout of the <tt>mob</tt> branch.</p>
  38
  39 <h2>For Users</h2>
  40
  41 <p>After cloning the repository, do <code>git checkout mob</code> to move to the
  42 <tt>mob</tt> branch.</p>
  43
  44 <p><strong>Note that you are taking a huge security risk on yourself
  45         if you just blindly grab the mob branch and run it on your
  46         system.</strong></p>
  47
  48 <h2>For Developers</h2>
  49
  50 <p>Just commit on the <tt>mob</tt> branch you've checked out and
  51 <code>git push</code> when the time is ripe.
  52 Have fun and enjoy, you are making the history!</p>