[Gnu-arch-users] Re: taglines vs explicit

[Miles Bader]

Zack Brown <address@hidden> writes:
> I think one of the main reasons people are so vehement about it, is because
> the 'tagline' method can be confusing until the big payoff is discovered
> (regular filesystem commands 'just work' etc). So there's always that sense
> that if someone doesn't like tagline, it might be just because they didn't
> understand it.

Actually my impression is that the reason why people are `advocating'
taglines so hard is simply in reaction to Andrea &al continually saying
they suck, are completely unjustified, etc.  If Andrea just said `I've
decided to use explicit,' that would be fine, but he's chosen to do a
lot more than that -- and much of what he's said on the issue seems
quite confused.

> But there's no reason not to use 'explicit' for the Linux kernel.

Well, there's the obvious reason: taglines have some advantages over
explicit tags, if they're in the canonical source.

Whether they're in the canonical source or not seems like the big
differentiator.  Whether they get _added_ to the canonical source,
logistical and political concerns aside (Hi Larry!  Oh wait, I'm in his
killfile...), basically seems to come down to whether or not the
maintainer thinks they're ugly or not, and whether that outweighs their
advantages.

Until such time as there _is_ some move by Linus to accomodate arch
officially, explicit tags are probably not an unreasonable choice,
though I think their inefficient implementation is a bit annoying.

Certainly taglines have additional annoying properties in this case
(e.g. they will occasionally cause conflicts at end of the file, when
applying a patch from external, untagged, sources).

> I think if you or others start using arch for the kernel, there might
> one day be a movement to migrate from 'explicit' to 'taglines', and then
> that will be difficult. But I'm sure a way will be found when the time
> comes.

And indeed, this step will probably be necessary even if taglines are
never used, as at some point the actual tag contents will need to be
reconciled in some manner.

-Miles
-- 
In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you
have to take the subway to their house.  And sometimes on the way, the train
is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway.
  [George Carlin]