How to merge a complicated mess

[Dave S]

A quick thought from a third-party:

On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 11:37 AM, Harry Putnam <reader at newsguy.com> wrote:

> Harvey Chapman <hchapman-hg at 3gfp.com> writes:
>
> [...]
>
> Harry wrote:
>
> >> All I can think of is having to do it all by hand which sounds like
> >> a lot of time and effort.  And maybe not worth it
> [...]



>
> Harvey wrote:
>
> > Or… perhaps you need a database and not a version control system, or
> > some combination of the two.
>
> That comment zipped right over my head.  I have no practical knowledge
> of databases'.  If you have the time, can you explain in some detail
> what you mean there?
>

Each snippet would be like a "row" (record) in a [relational] database,
with a column for keywords, and a fat column for the actual text of the
note.

The DB manager would allow you to sort, search, add, delete individual
snippets.  And instead of one or more large text files to maintain, merge,
etc, you'd have a set of records.

One advantage of staying with text files and a VCS is that you would have
the history of the snippets, which would be most useful if you had to see
changes in a particular snippet.  If you are just interested in the current
"value" of a setting, than this feature isn't important.

If you want to explore the database idea, try sqlite3.  It's free, easy to
install on both Windows and Linux, and there are various ways of accessing
your data via web front-ends (which would be the equivalent of using
hgweb).  It's plenty powerful enough even if you share your snippets with a
handful of other users.

Dave
/dps


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