[Gnu-arch-users] register-archive / tutorial

[Jeremy Shaw]

Hello,

In the arch Meets hello-world tutorial, it shows to register archives
as follows:

% tla register-archive address@hidden \
            http://regexps.srparish.net/{archives}/address@hidden

While this is technically correct, I have found emperically, that it
makes people believe they can use anything they want for the archive
name.

Furthermore, if they do register the archive with an arbitrary name --
register-archive does not complain in the least. But, eventually, when
you try to commit, or do a get from a revlib, you will get errors.

And, who wants to type all those extra characters when you don't need
them anyway?

So, I would propose two suggestions:

(1) I can submit a patch to the tutorial that will change the
    register-archive examples to not include an archive name:

% tla register-archive \
            http://regexps.srparish.net/{archives}/address@hidden

This alone should be a great help to new users.

(2) I (or someone else) could modify register-archive

It is my understanding that having to specify the archive name is
largely a leftover artifact from when tla could not figure the name
out automatically. So I see three possible 'fixes'.

(a) Issue a warning if the user specified name and real name don't
match. This is a bit cheesy since occansionally it is ok to register
the archive under a different name.

(b) Remove the need to specify an archive name altogether

This is harder because there is still a need to specify the name of an
archive when you are setting up a mirror. So, I would need to add some
new options to register-archive first, maybe something like:

% tla register-archive --source \
            http://regexps.srparish.net/{archives}/address@hidden
registered archive: address@hidden

I don't really know all the cases where you can/should register the
archive under a 'fake' name, so I am not sure if this option really
makes sense. Plus, removing the ability to force a name would probably
break a few scripts here and there (a minor issue).

(c) fix tla so that it works when you register an archive with a
    different name than what the archive itself lists.

On irc, someone stated that you *should* be able to pick an arbitrary
name when you register an archive and it is a bug that it doesn't
work. If that is the case, then ultimately that should be fixed -- but
in the meantime, it would probably help to at least modify the
tutorial.

Jeremy Shaw.
ps. You might think this is a bit trivial, and you would be right --
but having just trained a dozen or so people in the art of arch, you
would be amazed at the amount of confusion this issue caused.