Re: vc-status vs pcl-cvs

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

  > >> > > In that case, do you think [it was] premature to remove vc-directory 
which
  > >> > > was better at doing some of the things vc-dir should do?
  > >> > 
  > >> > AFAIK, it has the same "commit in foreground" and "no way to update the
  > >> > whole direcrory" problem.  VC-dir is missing some features, but which
  > >> > ones (other than the obvious ones from dired which probably won't be
  > >> > added to vc-dir anyway) were present in vc-dired?
  > >> 
  > >> vc-dir always needs the repository (even when vc-stay-local is t), 
  > 
  > > This would need to be implemented in specific backends (only CVS and svn
  > > care about it).  And it's rather easy: in vc-*-dir-status can use
  > > something like vc-rcs-dir-status.  Patches are welcome.
  > > (IMHO this is not very useful, but if people want it...)
  > 
  > I disagree.  The "stay-local" should be the default.  It is tremendously
  > useful (think of the case where you're not connected to your
  > repository).  The non-stay-local behavior is the one whose usefulness is
  > debatable (after all, most new VCS don't bother offering a clean
  > equivalent).

So that means you'd want vc-dir to work differently by default than
cvs-status?  That would be surprising for most users.
In the case of being disconnected, vc-dir can only show you the file
states, if they are edited or not, you can't do diff/log/annotate/commit
etc.  That's the reason I think it's not very useful.

Now, to implement this stuff vc-cvs-dir-status just needs to be changed
to do 
(if vc-cvs-stay-local-p
    THE_CODE_FROM-vc-rcs-dir-status
  THE_CURRENT_CODE)

(vc-rcs-dir-status has issues as noted in the comments and in the vc.el:Todo)