Hydra plays git: Visualise a run of the Head protocol as a series of git repository actions

[noonio]

Why

It's useful to visualise the protocol; to debug, but also just to understand, explain, or engage people.

What

It could be fun to map all the head protocol activities onto git/GitHub actions:

• commit - commit
• decommit - revert?
• init - init with some readme state
• collect - PR ?
• fanout - PR ?
• contesting - requesting changes on a PR? ( rejecting it? )
• ???

We could have one simple file that is updated with some state, and then all actions take place as git actions, as far as is reasonable.

It would then be a nice simple way to "export" a round of the head protocol; or watch one play-out live.

How

• Have a tool that can read a hydra head log and use that to perfectly recreate the protocol actions in the form of a git repo?
• ???

[ch1bo]

Interesting. What's the visual/image you have in mind when thinking about this?

[noonio]

It's hard to draw; but in my mind I picture a repo with all the collaborators as the peers in the head; a bunch of pull-requests for the various activities, and metadata expressed as a simple file, so (ideally) you could see the entire protocol by clicking around on the git history. (i.e. maybe even the commit graph is a pretty decent rendering of our usual state-diagrams; ideally a 1-1 mapping).

[ch1bo]

That sounds quite good to me! So we would have a git repository that we can point to as an example/explainer of a head life-cycle.

Some questions (more about priority):

• Is this helping our target audience to understand? (it might be)
• Is the actual git repository enough or would an explainer article be (more) relevant?

[noonio]

I think we could have a git repo yes; but moreoever I think it would be more useful to create a repo from, perhaps (if there's enough detail?) a log run of a hydra-node; i.e. at any point you can export the protocol state as a git repo.

I think an explainer article would be very useful; i.e. basically necessary to implement the feature anyway.