[Gnu-arch-users] Re: {arch} directory

[Miles Bader]

Dustin Sallings <address@hidden> writes:
> I have to imagine this has been discussed, but is there a good reason
> to keep the arch stuff in {arch} vs. something like .arch ?  {arch} is
> a little difficult to deal with.

Why?

I was a bit bothered by {arch} at first, because it was unfamiliar, but
that didn't last long.  On balance, it seems a pretty reasonable choice;
the funny format makes it unlikely to conflict with existing
files/directories, and it's otherwise fairly unobtrusive (more so than
all UPPERCASED names).  I think it's actually a _good_ thing that it's
user-visible, because it tells you something important: `This source
directory is being handled by arch.'

The only really annoying thing is that it gets hit by recursive
finds/greps/whatever -- but so does every other in-directory solution
(CVS, .svn, etc).

I seem to recall there being other list discussions about the time I
joined, about using `more normal' names for the various arch special
files, and at the time I was sympathetic, but I think in retrospect,
it's better to keep things they way they are; Tom's conventions are
actually pretty good.

The only _real_ issues I can think of are:

 (1) Some editors (vim) have problems with `+' prefixed filenames, which
     is mainly a problem for editing log-files made with `tla make-log'.

 (2) Interaction with shell completion -- bash won't complete past an
     `=' (because it tries to support variable assignment completion),
     unless you prefix it with a backslash [with other special
     characters, bash will actually fill in the backslash for you, so
     they don't appear to be an issue].  I think bash can be fixed to
     get past this (see tez's branch of bash*).

* http://arch.bluegate.org:8080/{archives}/tez-2003

-Miles
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