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

[Dustin Sallings]

On Friday, Sep 26, 2003, at 03:44 US/Pacific, Mark A. Flacy wrote:

> I disagree with your position. {arch} should remain as is.

	I was kind of hoping more for justifications for the design than 
general opposition.  The only justification I've heard so far has been 
visibility, which, as I demonstrated, can easily been provided with a 
hook and look like anything the user wants it to look like.

	As it is, the design forces users to change the way they work more 
than they should have to for the sake of some users who want a visual 
indication that they're in the root of an arch-handled directory.

	I, personally, see no advantage in having a directory have a visual 
indicator that it's handled by arch, but I also so no reason to prevent 
the user from having such an indication it is so desired.  It kind of 
feels like a banner ad sitting in my source directories, except my 
finds (find * ...) and such match it if I'm not careful to avoid it.

        Here's basically what it comes down to from my point of view:

	Renaming it to a hidden file does not prevent any users who want to 
from having a visual indication that they're in a directory handled by 
arch.  They can even have a hook (or init-tree option) to symlink 
{arch} to the hidden directory.  (Groups A and B both get what they 
want).

	The current state does prevent users who do not want it to be in their 
way from accomplishing this.  (Group A gets what they want, group B 
cannot get what they want).

	I don't think the fact that some users learn to accept it (or even 
embrace it) really changes the fact that it only solves a visibility 
preference that certain users want as a side-effect of its true 
purpose, which is to handle the internal state of the tree.

--
Dustin Sallings