New Functionality: find connected Git history from hash of init commit via web API without auth
Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this proposal.
I originally thought I would rely on Software Heritage for the following functionality but in the end it is GitHub that is working best. But I hope Software Heritage can be an alternative in the future.
The functionality is taking the hash of an initial Git commit and then finding the connected Git commit history by using a web API without authentication. This functionality is for a small class of Git commits. The hash comes from a Document Succession Identifier (DSI) [1] and the Git history is stored in Document Succession Git Layout (DSGL) [2]. These Git histories in DSGL are generally linear and not more than tens of commits. There are currently only 7 document successions in existence but hopeful many more in the future! :-)
There are currently two approaches to achieve this functionality:
A) follow the manual instructions for reading successions in the DSHMT manual [3]
or
B) use the find subcommand of Hidos [4] which uses this code [5] to call GitHub.
I plan to continue making it easier to perform this finding/reading task for document successions in DSGL. In particular, I am planning to run this find code from within a GitHub Action and GitLab CI. I am also considering developing TypeScript or Rust code that can perform this client-side from within a browser. This is part of the reason for wanting a public web API that does not require authentication.
For now I plan to just continue relying on GitHub for this rather than Software Heritage Archive. I'm not quite sure what is the best solution for the future. It seems better to not only rely on GitHub.
[1] https://perm.pub/1wFGhvmv8XZfPx0O5Hya2e9AyXo
[2] https://perm.pub/VGajCjaNP1Ugz58Khn1JWOEdMZ8
[3] https://manual.perm.pub/read/
[4] https://hidos.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/#subcommand-find
[5] https://gitlab.com/perm.pub/hidos/-/blob/8f4a89b0a287219cbc50327c8503100fe9e9af5e/hidos/remote.py