[Monotone-devel] Suggestion for new commit variant

[Wim Oudshoorn]

People who read my mails might know that I feel sometimes
limited by how monotone thinks.  Most of it comes down
to the fact that I don't have full freedom of arranging
the underlying DAG.

It just dawned on me that the following command would
solve quite a few of my problems:

monotone newcommit [-b branch] -parentrevs rev1 rev2 ....

That is, I can commit a set of source files  
and explicitly specify the parent revisions.

This would solve quite a few of my problems:

1 - merging outside of monotone's control:

  * Check out HEAD1
  * Check out HEAD2
  * Check out ANCESTOR
  * Do my merge on my tree
  * monotone newcommit -parentrevs HEAD1 HEAD2


2 - propagate does not mess up my tree:

  REV1    
  branch A
            \
             \
             REV2
             branch B

   
   propagate B A

   wil change in:

   monotone newcommit -b branch A  -parentrevs REV1 REV2 to yield

   which results in:

   REV1              REV3
   branch A -------> branch A
            \        /
             \      /
            REV2 
            branch B


3 - I can do an explicit dissapprove

  REV1       -----> REV2
  branch A          branch A
               /
              /
         ....


   namely checkout REV1 
   and do:

   monotone newcommit -parentrevs REV1 REV2.



DISCLAIMER
----------

This just occured to me, so it might be totally
unworkable, if so please let me know.

Also, I will be away without any internet access
until beginning next week.  So I hope I have
some reading up to do when I return :-)


Wim Oudshoorn.