Re: [Gnu-arch-users] distinguished branch name, "clone"

[Miles Bader]

On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 05:36:29PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> But we could still simplify things further if we created a distinguished
> branch name.  Let's call it "mainline", which is my personal preference
> (but suggestions are welcome).
> I'd like to have be able to say just "tla get foo", and have that
> translate into "tla get foo--mainline--0.6".

I think this could adversely affect the way people think about arch branches
-- if there's a `distinguished' branch, people will think that it's somehow
special, and will be less given to moving away from CVS-style development
patterns (the barrier would only be psychological, of course, but such things
have a real effect).

It would be less objectionable if it were (1) optional, and (2) specified
per category.  For instance, maybe if there were a CAT/=default-branch file,
then the tla get command would default to that.  This has the further
advantage that one could change it if the default branch changes (as it
sometimes does).

I'll further note that which branch is the default, when used for saving
typing or whatever, often differs for different users, so in fact, maybe this
is the sort of thing that would be better relegated to a user initfile
somewhere (perhaps using an archive default as a backup).

Personally what I've taken to doing is creating little one-line shell
scripts in my project trees that capture common actions, e.g., in my tla dir
I might have an executable file called `+merge' that contains:

  tla star-merge address@hidden/tla-...

When I want to do a merge from Tom, I just type `+merge' (and similarly for
various branches of my own archive).  The `+' at the start of the name
prevents it from being treated as a source file.

-Miles
-- 
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly it flips over,
pinning you underneath.  At night the ice weasels come.  --Nietzsche