Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Status of global and tree aliases

[Ron Parker]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 13:19:10 -0400, James Blackwell <address@hidden> wrote:

> I originally wanted to do "lordtla--patch-12", but that would mean
> substring matching and that gets us into a mess with lazy people
> *real* quick.

Rather than substring matching in general, why not handle the special cases of:
      [alias]--[qualifier]
and
      [alias]/[qualifier].

I am not proposing that the interpretation of [qualifier] needs to be
intelligent.  Rather [alias] would be expanded in the simple cases of
being followed by a slash or double-dash. This would allow using an
alias for an archive name, FQ category, branch, or version and then
the qualifier allows the user to refine that as mentioned in Aaron's
mail.

If on the other hand the expansion of the alias results in a
nonsensical argument for the given command, let it fail in the
commands code. Given this, I would expect

$ tla alias --add --global lordtla address@hidden/tla--devo
$ tla get lordtla--patch-12

would yield something like "address@hidden/tla--devo--patch-12 is
not a valid REVISION." Whereas,

$ tla get lordtla--1.3--patch-12

Would get address@hidden/tla--devo--1.3--patch-12.