Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: {arch} directory

[Adam Spiers]

Dustin Sallings (address@hidden) wrote:
> On Wednesday, Sep 24, 2003, at 01:59 US/Pacific, Miles Bader wrote:
> >Dustin Sallings <address@hidden> writes:
> >>I have to imagine this has been discussed, but is there a good reason
> >>to keep the arch stuff in {arch} vs. something like .arch ?  {arch} is
> >>a little difficult to deal with.
> >
> >Why?
> >
> >I was a bit bothered by {arch} at first, because it was unfamiliar, but
> >that didn't last long.  On balance, it seems a pretty reasonable 
> >choice;
> >the funny format makes it unlikely to conflict with existing
> >files/directories, and it's otherwise fairly unobtrusive (more so than
> >all UPPERCASED names).  I think it's actually a _good_ thing that it's
> >user-visible, because it tells you something important: `This source
> >directory is being handled by arch.'
> >
> >The only really annoying thing is that it gets hit by recursive
> >finds/greps/whatever -- but so does every other in-directory solution
> >(CVS, .svn, etc).
> 
>       Well, I can ``grep string *'' and miss a dot file.  In fact, this is 
>       a problem when importing an existing tree with a bunch of stuff at the 
> top.  I want to do a ``find *'' but that matches {arch}.  I end up 
> doing a ``find [A-z]*'' which is slightly less fun to type.  Same thing 
> when grepping, finding later, etc...

I'm with you on this, and I think it deserves more attention that
classifying as a "very minor issue".  I have done countless
finds/greps/globs etc. over the years that have required the RCS/CVS
directories to be pruned and while it's not an enormous cost for a
once-off, it does add up.