On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com>wrote:

> http://blog.datomic.com/2012/10/codeq.html
>
> Executive summary:
> * Git gives version control over files
> * Clojure code typically has lots of functions or other chunks of code
> in one file
> * This means you can't ask for the version of a single unit of code
> * Static analyses over the files as they vary through time, dumped
> into a database, yields interesting stuff
>
> What they're calling "codeqs" ("code quantum") filetree folks would
> call a file, because filetree already splits everything (I think?)
> into bits, and versions everything at the "codeq" level by virtue of
> storing each bit in its own file: class definition, comment, method
> definition, etc.
>
> So we already have most of this stuff already - I couldn't live
> without my in-image method versions - but I'm wondering if anyone else
> can spot anything worth copying?
>

Nah. They're basically figuring out how to extract the semantic changes
from git, since git just treats the source code as opaque text. That gets
them to what Monticello has now. I guess there's a bit of "imagine what you
could do then!" that's unspecified.

Which is not to say that it's a bad idea. I'd love to create a huge
database of, say, the update stream going back to the beginning, or the
entire contents of squeaksource. But... then what?

Things that spring to mind immediately:

- universal senders and implementors
- metrics like message sends per method or methods per class
- detection of package dependencies
- analysis of how long-lived packages change over time
- analysis of contribution and collaboration between coders

and so on.

But, what good is it? Might be interesting, maybe there's some research
papers to be written, but would it do us any good as a community? Would
there be useful tools that came out of it? Would it be worth the effort?
Hard to say.

Colin
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