[Gnu-arch-users] Re: bitkeeper vs tla

[Miles Bader]

Dustin Sallings <address@hidden> writes:
>> Well, if you can do hard-linked source trees, I've found that my 'tla 
>> changes' time goes *way* down.
>
>       Hmm...  I didn't try that one, but it scares me just a bit.  I have a 
> fear that some tool I use might end up screwing up the revlib.

A well-founded fear: I used --link for a while, with good effect (my main
tools, emacs and patch, both deal well with hard-links), but had to trash
my entire revlib after a single ill-considered shell-redirection.
Downloading everything again over a slow net link was not fun.

I think --link is not a good idea in general except for trees that you
won't modify (though temporary trees that you don't modify are in fact a
very useful and common thing), or are similarly only used in restricted
ways.

Perhaps tla could somehow assist this by providing a way to easily make
all files in a project tree read-only, e.g., `tla get --link --read-only'?
I guess it would have to add some meta-data indicator to tell mkpatch not
to do any permission bit comparisons against that tree.

-Miles
-- 
Suburbia: where they tear out the trees and then name streets after them.