Re: [Gnu-arch-users] newbie questions about tagging

[Charles Duffy]

On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 15:34, Carlos Pereira wrote:
> 1) My current doubts are about tagging: the manual (above) 
> seems to describe the explicit method, but says almost 
> nothing about the other methods, namely the tagline method. 
> Is there some URL that I missed?
> 
> 2) I have about 300 files in my (GPL) app, shall I use the --names
> method just to start learning, importing and preparing my first 
> repositories, or do I have to add tags to all these files before
> having even a glimpse of how Arch works?

You should be able to add explicit tags to all your files very easily --
something like:
tla inventory --untagged | gawk '{print $2}' | xargs tla add

> 3) How wise is it to start with a given tagging method and then
> later change everything to, say, the recommended tagline method?
> (I suppose it is not possible/recommended to have different files
> tagged with different methods)?

Not fun. You're probably best off setting your tagging method to
tagline, even if you don't use it, as tagline is compatible with
alternate tagging mechanisms as well.

> 4) Is there some URL comparing the advantages and disadvantages
> of tagline and explicit methods?

Not that I know of -- but there are a *lot* of very long threads in the
mailing list archive on that topic.

> 5) In the tagline method I suppose I have to add a tag to each file,
> typically at the beginning. Could someone post some examples of good 
> taggingsystems, showing the exact line to insert in the source files?

Adding something like "/* tag: <uuidgen output>\n*/" is a fairly good
call.

> 6) How can I tag directories in the tagline method?
> (Reading the mailling list archives, it seems that
> tags must be added explicitly?)

"find . -type d | xargs tla add"?

> 7) I understand that using tags to describe files
> is a good thing, for example to track down a file moved 
> to a different directory or renamed. But what happens if
> later I come to the conclusion that I should improve the 
> way I tag my files... which means changing all the tags...
> Arch can still compare the new files with the old ones?
> or do I have to start a new archive/tree from scratch
> and forget the old repositories?

No, the files' history becomes disjoint at that point -- which is part
of the point of using uuids or something similar for taglines (as
textual descriptions may well become inaccurate over time).