[OSM-newbies] Sandbox and history

[Thomas Wood]

We currently have no true API sandbox, but we do have:
1) main.dev.openstreetmap.org, a test API server for devs that is
unimportant in terms of data (has the UK data imported)
2) The play mode in potlatch, not very useful, since you've said
you're using JOSM.

You can switch to the dev server in josm, but I find it a pain to
switch back again to the real server when I want to do some real work.

OSM is version controlled at the moment in the sense that there is a
history of each object in the database, deleted and states of old
objects are stored and retrievable by using the /history call in raw
API terms.
There's also weekly data dumps (which aren't ideal for this sort of process)

There was recently a changesets and rollbacks dev hackday where some
work was put into better version control.
The idea of a changeset will be introduced in the next API version
that should allow better change monitoring. Objects will also inform
you of a version id, to prevent edit conflicts (which currently aren't
handled well)
Automatic reversion of spam or mistakes won't be possible, but it is
thought that tools will be written to graphically display a changeset
and be able to selectively revert changes within that set, up to the
whole set itself.

Regards,
Thomas Wood
(Edgemaster)

On 5/10/08, Uwe Geuder <jfcoekd02 at sneakemail.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> As my first edits in OSM I intended to make some smaller improvements and
> additions to the streets in my neighbourhood.
> But of course I'd like to avoid doing any damage to existing work.
>
> 2 questions came up:
>
> 1. Most Wikis have a sandbox, where you can just play around and test what
> your ideas will look like in the system. Does OSM have a sandbox?
>
> 2. I think I've read somewhere that you don't have to be afraid of breaking
> anything, because OSM is under version management, just like a Wiki.
> However, when looking in the Web interface and in JOSM I couldn't see how to
> compare different versions or how fetch a previous version. Actually no
> hints to any version management at all.
>
> Looking at some XML data I saw timestamps and a visible=true attribute. (but
> the attribute was indeed true in all data I happend to retrieve). These
> could probably be used to build version managent, but I don't think that's
> the level the average user wants to act on.
>
> Regards,
>
> Uwe
>
>
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-- 
Regards,
Thomas Wood
(Edgemaster)