[Rebuild] Getting underway before 1st April

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 01/31/2012 05:32 PM, Michael Collinson wrote:
> And following things logically through, then we want the magic
> consensus. May I therefore ask from a **purely technical point of
> view**, Does it make sense
>
> - (for me to continue) to persuade the community that the WTFE algo
> should be the basis of the transition

The WTFE algorithm does have a few unclear points though, e.g. the wiki 
page on which people can flag users/changesets for marking them "clean". 
LWG decision will be needed on what to do with that, if they just go 
along with that or what.

> - that split/merged ways is the only point of contention that could make
> any potential real difference

We can get them into WTFE one way or another. Pre-0.5 history is another 
one of those "little effect but would have to be done for completeness" 
things.

> - that the WTFE "rules" could indeed by mapped into scripts that
> actually altered the database.

They likely can, but it is not yet clear whether we will have something 
that actually alters an existing database rather than just rebuilding 
from scratch.

I would also feel very relieved if somebody would start from a clean 
slate and come up with an algorithm to determine "what is clean", run it 
on a full history file and compare results with what I have. I mean, 
this is just stuff I hacked up on a weekend! There surely should be 
*some* quality assurance?

> - and that the resulting map would look almost exactly the same as the
> CleanMap Simon is publishing now?

I think that Simon is making a number of assumptions that we would not 
get away with, notably that if a way is clean then we can always use all 
its nodes no matter what. So the map paints a rosier picture than what 
we will have.

BTW, from a purely technical point of view, I believe that having a few 
months more would ensure an altogether better license change. It's ok to 
stick to April 1st for a while to convey the urgency, but I have a 
feeling that a lot of things will only be half done by then.

Bye
Frederik