[Gnu-arch-users] Re: reminder: winning smallish project

[Miles Bader]

Jason McCarty <address@hidden> writes:
> Anyway, I completely agree with you here, but how about instead of
> --opposite, use --source (with --reverse). It would be more intuitive
> since it operates precisely on the files listed by inventory --source.
> It would also have the advantage of being able to apply patches in the
> normal direction without touching patch-logs.

Both --opposite and --source seem wrong to me -- the former, because as
Robert pointed out, it's a synonym for --reverse; the latter because it
seems too low-level (even if people know about how arch uses patch-logs
to do things, I think it's often easier to think in higher-level terms).

I'd rather have two semantically identical, but differently named,
options for replay and dopatch, with the former emphasizing the
high-level operation of `undo the changes in this patch, but don't
delete the patch from the history', and the latter more directly saying
what's going on at a low-level.  If it's later discovered that there's
some odd little wrinkle that makes it desirable to change the behavior
of replay in this case, then it might make sense to in fact add a new
option corresponding to that wrinkle to dopatch, and change replay to
use it without changing replay's higher-level interface.

Some ideas for replay:

  --omit     `omit this patch from the patch-stream'
  --suppress `forcibly prevent this patch from being part of the patch-stream'

For dopatch, variants on either of the two previous suggestions seems
reasonable:  --no-patch-logs, --source-only.  I rather like
--no-patch-logs better because it makes it clear _exactly_ what's being
done; --source-only seems a little unclear in the case where there are
changes that aren't really to the `source code,' but are not changes in
the patch-logs either (e.g., a change to =tagging-method, or a change in
an .arch-ids file).

-Miles
-- 
`...the Soviet Union was sliding in to an economic collapse so comprehensive
 that in the end its factories produced not goods but bads: finished products
 less valuable than the raw materials they were made from.'  [The Economist]