[Monotone-devel] Re: [PATCH] mtn commit without -b and mtn branch

[Bruce Stephens]

Derek Scherger <address@hidden> writes:

> Nathaniel Smith wrote:
>> That said, I'm not stuck on branch --go; but we do need some solution
>> to these problems.
>
> This feels like an yet another new style of commands to me and I
> think we already have too many.

It's probably worth looking at the tutorial, and at the things that
confuse people which aren't in the tutorial.

My guess is the latter are largely concerned with how monotone differs
from other systems.  Such things probably aren't well covered in the
tutorial, which (naturally) describes recommended usage of monotone.

Specifically, I guess, people are looking for something like "svn
switch", to switch a workspace to an existing branch, and some way to
create a new branch.

My guess is the second is slightly more awkward.  It's not *that* hard
to make a change in your workspace and then do a "mtn commit -b ...",
but that way of working is different (not very different, but I think
different enough).  (Sometimes you might want to name the branch
before making any changes.)

So I think we want to make those two operations nice and simple,
because they're common, if only because other systems provide them.
(Though actually I think they're convenient in their own right.)

The second (changing the workspace to a new branch, ready to make a
commit to that new branch) could error out if the new branch already
exists.

"mtn branch" seems a perfectly reasonable option for that: so "mtn
branch ..." should (IMHO) fail if the named branch exists (in that
database), and otherwise just mark the branch in _MTN/options of that
workspace.

And "mtn switch" seems fine for the other one, though "mtn update -b"
would also be OK (even if its meaning of -b is different to other
commands).  Actually I always use "mtn update -r h:..." which always
seems to work for me, though I understand it won't always.  Maybe
there could be some hack so that if the selector has that form, it'll
always change the branch suitably or something?

One might also want to commit the current workspace to an existing
(different) branch, but I think making that a bit more awkward is
fine.  (So just "mtn commit -b ..." is fine, IMHO.)

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