[PATCH] hgweb: adding branch, tags, bookmarks, and file list to atom feed entries

[Jensen, Aaron]

> One big question: how sure can we be that no one relies on the old format?

In reality, we can't. Since the content section of atom is xhtml, it would be parseable by XML readers (for RSS, the content is HTML wrapped in a CDATA section, but there is nothing stopping someone from cracking it open and parsing it out), so there is a chance someone somewhere is grabbing feed XML, parsing it, and doing something with it. 

In practice, practice, though, I doubt anyone is doing this. The only useful information published in either RSS/Atom feeds was author and description. I don't think this was enough information to make it worth anyone's time to parse out. There are much better ways (hg log) of getting history from a repository. I wouldn't consider the output from an RSS/Atom feed an API that people can/should code against.


> Also, it seems the omission of author is pretty glaring. I know it's part of the Atom schema already, but I think lots of reader 
> agents neglect it.

I use Feedbin as my Atom/RSS reader, and it seems to correctly display author information. Our repositories are internal, so developers that subscribe have to use an internal Atom/RSS reader, which is always Outlook.  It, too, shows author information from the feed. So, there's a sample of two from a pool of infinity.

Of course, adding it into the content wouldn't be hard at all. Should I make that change a submit an updated patch?