[Gnu-arch-users] Re: 'arch send' format

[Amit Shah]

Miles Bader wrote:

> Amit Shah <address@hidden> writes:
>> We could have a shell script with a normal patch that shows changes
>> within files. For representing changes to the file structure (like
>> renames, deletes, etc.), we could put shell commands like "mv foo.h
>> bar.h" and so on, so that patches created by people using arch for people
>> using other systems (or even arch, but don't want to "get" the changesets
>> from some archive) can be applied normally.
> 
> People always suggest this when the topic comes up, and it seems like
> a really bad idea to me; it's just too dangerous for people to get in
> the habit of running shell scripts they receive.
> 
> I don't even like the idea of a representation that only _looks_ like
> shell commands (but is applied by a special program) -- people might
> still get into the habit of running it anyway, or trying to.
> 
> It seems simpler and more comforting to have a nice simple abstract
> representation which is easily turned back into a changeset and applied
> by `dopatch' (perhaps a single tla command does everything, but anyway).
> 
> [
>  Maybe it's nicer to use a renaming syntax instead of the
>  id-tag/filename pairs that changesets use, so it's easier for a human
>  to read, but my argument is that it should be something like:
> 
>     "FILE1" => "FILE2"
> 
>  not
> 
>     mv "FILE1" "FILE2"
> ]

yeah, and have some script (which is shared by all the developers) to
interpret this file and then come up with a script which does what the
changeset was supposed to do.

The importance of having a script is that all the people might not always
use the same VC software.

> 
> -Miles

Amit.
-- 
Amit Shah
http://amitshah.nav.to/