Re: Introducing 'unrecognized and 'ignored

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

  >     The disadvantages or using dired: 
  > 
  > Several of these are not persuasive (at least based on what
  > you've said so far).
  > 
  >      - performance  -- the difference is HUGE
  > 
  > What is the connection between using dired and this slowdown?

It is much faster to ask the VCS about the status of the files and just
display those results, rather than what it is done today: ask dired
about all the files in a directory and the ask the VCS about the
status.

  >      - future extensibility - VC systems are evolving at a fast pace
  >        nowadays, being able to easily make changes to accommodate new
  >        features is very important. 
  > 
  > I see no point paying the price today for a benefit that may only
  > possibly develop.  I'd rather pay that price if and when there is a
  > real benefit to be gained.  It won't be more work then than it is
  > today.

It would be, tweaking the dired display is much harder than implementing
a better one from scratch using ewocs. Compare the PCL-CVS display with
vc-dired, IMHO it looks better.

  > On the other hand, this could be a significant reason:
  > 
  >      - display flexibility  -- it is much easier to do custom displays as
  >        needed by VC using ewocs than to retrofit it into dired.  Just look
  >        at the PCL-CVS display and compare it with vc-dired.
  > 
  > If custom displays are needed, that probably requires splitting off.
  > 
  > Are custom displays needed?  What would you want to use them for?

I believe so. One use for displaying no-file related information:
repository name, branch name, the command that is being executed (all
done by PCL-CVS). 

In the future we might want to add some widgets to select the branch to
display. Or to the repository to connect to. Maybe display a short
version of the logs for the last commits in the repository for the files
that need merging.