Re: [Monotone-devel] Command design and naming?

[William Uther]

On 24/02/2007, at 2:02 AM, Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker wrote:

> A small amount of syntactic sugar can have big consequences.  It has
> to be maintained over time, and it could lead to as much confusion as
> it can help (see tla and the pletora of subcommands that do almost,
> but not quite the same thing).  Sort of "Oh shit, I shouldn't have
> done it *that* way this time!" kind of confusion.

Yes, it is important to design things well.  Hence my email :).

> willu> This is a side issue, but no I'm not amazingly bent on specific
> willu> branches.  I had simply noted that if you commit in one branch,
> willu> you don't expect your work in another branch to be synced.
>
> ... unless you're working in several branches at once, for example
> when a change in one requires a change that belongs in another that is
> then propagated to the first.  I've worked a lot that way, even before
> I started using monotone.

In which case you could always sync manually?  Is it going to beak  
anything horribly if you have been working as you suggest and only  
sync that branch?  You can still sync afterwards, right?

> Oh goody good!  Code is a good way to make a case.  Actually, nothing
> stops you from creating a branch for yourself where you develop that.

Hehe.  Well, I originally intended to make my own branch.  So I  
checked out a new wc:

% mtn -d mt.db -b net.venge.monotone monotone-newcmds

Then I went to put it on a branch:

% cd monotone-newcmds
% mtn ci -b net.venge.monotone.new-commands -m "start a branch for  
new commands"
mtn: misuse: no changes to commit

I'm not sure how I feel about that.  I can see why the check is  
there, and I'm guessing there are two ways around it:

i) make some changes first :)
ii) create some new cert so that the old revision is on both the old  
and new branches, then update the wc to the new branch.

I figured i) was easier.

> willu> From the tone of your email I suspect that my email volume is
> willu> annoying you.
>
> No.  But you may want to know that I can come out pretty powerfully
> and arrogantly when I've an opinion I stand by.  You're not the first
> to have mistaken that for being annoyed ;).
>
> Well, ok, perhaps not entirely true.  I do get annoyed when people
> wanna try something new without trying to read up and understand the
> new thing, and are instead expecting it to behave like their old
> thing.  And no, I don't see you as such a person, but it seems like
> you have some sort of pressure from people who seem to do just that,
> not read up.

Yes.  If mtn can accommodate them easily, then it might win more  
converts.  Of course, that might be a bad thing - you'll get more  
bozos posting on mailing lists. :p

> So my appologies, I understand that you may be caught
> between a rock and a hard place.  I'll see if I can get a bit less
> aggressive ;).

It's ok, I'm tough.  I just didn't want my first move in a new place  
to be to piss off the people who I'll want to commit my patches :).

> willu> Having said that, Monotone is a very nice VCS, but it hits
> willu> people transferring from other systems with a fair few gotchas.
>
> Oh yeah, there are gotchas, I agree with that.  Those I see are the
> amount of time the initial pull of a large project can take and that
> the security system is a bit weak.  As far as I know, both are being
> worked on (the latter in the form of policy branches, something I
> really look forward to trying out (*wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*)).

I think partial pull is more of an issue for new users than  
security.  The security model of mtn is at least as good as that of cvs.

> I understand that one of your gotchas is verbosity (interestingly
> enough, since you see yourself as quite verbose ;)) and lack of
> support for a centralised view.  Anything else?

The verbosity is more an input verbosity than an output verbosity  
thing.  The commands are at a lower level of abstraction than they  
could be (or rather, you could do with higher level commands in  
addition to the current ones).

I'm making sure I list my itches: http://venge.net/mtn-wiki/WishList

They're not in any particular order.  Many of them are being worked on.

> Bah, I'm sure you have more to give.  Welcome to this community!

Thanks :)

Will       :-}