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From: Jason Smith <jason.h.smith@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 10:45:08 +0700
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Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Capability identification
To: dev@couchdb.apache.org
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On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 5:40 AM, Joan Touzet <wohali@apache.org> wrote:

> Today, if I GET http://localhost:5984/ , I get:
>
>
> {"couchdb":"Welcome","uuid":"b1b1dbe964914a9cb1467bfd4f297fed","version":"1.3.0","vendor":{"version":"1.3.0","name":"The
> Apache Software Foundation"}}
>
> If I GET from http://mozauto.iriscouch.com/ , I get:
>
>
> {"couchdb":"Welcome","uuid":"bac168113808f7ed357fb53f3a7a68bc","version":"1.3.0","vendor":{"version":"1.3.0r1","name":"Iris
> Couch"}}
>
> And if I GET http://wohali.cloudant.com/ , I get:
>
>   {"couchdb":"Welcome","version":"1.0.2","cloudant_build":"1202"}
>
> I believe I get further still different responses from Pouch and Touch
> and other CouchDB-alikes, provided they even have an equivalent of
> GET /.
>
> Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, the developers of Internet Relay
> Chat daemons faced a similar problem. While they were bound by a single
> RFC (and later, its twin), each developer wanted to extend the program
> in interesting and unique ways. Some of those features became
> commonplace and built a shared understanding, others were unique
> capabilities of specific implementations, and yet others indicated
> specific incompatibilities introduced for nefarious purposes.
>

Chris Anderson used to say, "IRC is the only network which can tolerate
netsplits. Also, it is the only network that has netsplits."

:P

Anyway, I really like this idea. It will be easy to implement in a
federated way (everybody fleshes out their own implementation, plus central
work on ASF CouchDB). And maybe this could even encourage feature
development. Instead of a nasty "nonstandard fork" I can work on a pleasant
"new capability."

Great example: https://github.com/iriscouch/pingquery_couchdb

I exercise this from probe_couchdb I don't even remember how I test for
compatibility.

What is the starting point? If I just brainstorm a list of potential
capabilities to this thread, does that help anybody?

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