Done some interesting stuff in ikiwiki this evening..

Maybe you want to set up a mirror of a wiki. It's easy enough to do with an ikiwiki that's backed by git since you can just clone its repository and set up the mirror. But how to know when there's an update of the origin wiki, to update your mirror? I've added a plugin that allows you to edit a page on the origin wiki, and ask it to ping your wiki. And another plugin that your wiki can use to listen for pings and update itself, pulling down the changes from version control.

Nice thing about this is that any ikiwiki wiki that publishes its revision control, and enables the pinger plugin, can then be mirrored by anyone, with no coordination needed with its admin. Even multilevel mirror networks are possible to set up. (The astute may notice that loops are also possible.. but they will will be broken after 1 cycle.)

But this doesn't only allow mirroring. If you're using distributed version control, it also allows branching of a wiki. Just mirror as usual, but then make changes to the mirror, and don't send them back to the origin. Instant branch, that will be kept up-to-date with changes made to the origin. (Unless there's a conflict, that would need to be manually resolved, obviously.)

Wouldn't it be nice if you could git clone git://wikipedia.org/ or git://wiki.debian.org/ and go off and make it into something you're really happy with? Only thing standing in the way is that neither site uses ikiwiki. For now, you'll have to settle with cloning and branching git://git.ikiwiki.info/ :-)

Technical details here.