Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: give us a hand with arch

[Robert Collins]

On Sun, 2003-09-28 at 20:58, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:


> You must admit that if you had this second channel the explicit would
> obsolete the taglines *completely* and it would be completely wasteful
> to leave the taglines metadata inlined and mixed with the data.

No, I don't have to admit that. It's an argument, not a proof. All that
second channel would do is raise the bar for processing such id's
automatically, reduce portability, and generally make life difficult. It
would also be less transparent for the user trying to see how things
work.

> I don't understand very well the export through another RCS point sorry,
> could you elaborate?

because the taglines are embedded in the file, any tool that processes
files (such as CVS, bk, perforce, awk etc) will preserve that tag as a
file goes through that tool. So for instance, I could give you a tree
that has tagline, you could import into CVS, hack away, and send me the
tree back. Even if you renamed files, deleted, or I'd done the same, I'd
still have the mapping from logical id to path, and be able to
effortlessly apply patches.

> > Really it's quite disappointing the depth of your (apparent) prejuidice.
> 
> No need to be disappointed, the tagline is the best you can do w/o
> kernel support to make it trasparent as it should have been (assuming
> you don't want to call move-tag and friends). 

Sigh. tagline is *not* about avoiding those calls. Thats a component of
it, but not the only reason.

> It's just that I prefer
> having to call move-tag/add-tag/delete-tag then to pollute the data with
> metadata in non standard formats and that doesn't provide math safety
> across the tree since anybody can add "arch-tag: foo" simultaneously in
> all files. 

GUIDS.

> The day we'll have multiple channels in the inode, or a way
> to bind two files together, we won't need to call move-tag and friends
> anymore, and still it will be the explicit mode, never the tagline.

And you'll be able to get conflicts. Or worse, you'll have two copies of
the same file with different logical id's preventing the exchange of
patches between the users.

Rob
-- 
GPG key available at: <http://members.aardvark.net.au/lifeless/keys.txt>.

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