Re: [Monotone-devel] mtn copy anyone?

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2007 at 09:43:10AM -0400, Ben Walton wrote:
> A project that I'm currently working on (machine inventory) has me
> doing a fair amount of cp foo bar; mtn add bar; edit bar to match the
> new machine; lather; rinse; repeat.  I'm not sure if it's been
> discussed before, but what are peoples' thoughts about mtn copy?

Well, it's trivial to add a command called "mtn copy" (or "mtn cp").
The question is what it should do :-).

It could just be equivalent to "cp foo bar; mtn add bar".
It could somehow record something special in the history.  This
special thing could be nothing but a bit of metadata that was exactly
equivalent to an add for history tracking purposes, but that, say,
'log' and 'annotate' did something smarter with.  Or it could actually
affect the history model -- then there are questions like how it works
through merging.  This is unclear too; there are a few alternative,
contradictory "natural" semantics for copy WRT merge.  (There's a
little about this at http://www.venge.net/mtn-wiki/HistoryBlueSky.)

The general messiness here is why we've stayed out of it so far.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways.