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

[Mark A. Flacy]

>>>>> "Colin" == Colin Walters <address@hidden> writes:
Colin> 
Colin> * distinguished branch
Colin> First of all, as you all know, in CVS there is a distinguished
Colin> branch name, "HEAD", which is the default branch.  It is usually
Colin> used to hold most forward development.

As a matter of comparison, there is no such equivalent for Clearcase.
Probably because Clearcase handles branching much better than CVS ever
will. 

Colin> I'd like to have something similar in tla.  There are several
Colin> reasons.  First, I like tla's "category--branch--version" naming a
Colin> lot.  It's very clean and clear.  However, sometimes it's a bit much
Colin> to type.  This is somewhat recognized already in that you can type
Colin> "tla get foo--mainline", and that will translate into the most
Colin> recent version of the "mainline" branch (say, 0.6).
Colin> 
Colin> But we could still simplify things further if we created a distinguished
Colin> branch name.  Let's call it "mainline", which is my personal preference
Colin> (but suggestions are welcome).
Colin> I'd like to have be able to say just "tla get foo", and have that
Colin> translate into "tla get foo--mainline--0.6".

Having read the rest of the thread, I guess that you aren't kidding.  You
should be.  In your project, you could simply TELL people that the main
line of development is "mainline".

Good grief, there's enough flak about "category--branch--version" being too
structured and you want to add "Oh yeah, it is 'category--branch--version'
except, of course, 'category--mainline--version' is a GLOBALLY SPECIAL CASE
for every archive that will ever exist."


Colin> 
Colin> If this were implemented consistently among all the various commands
Colin> (along with the versioning defaults), it could save us all quite a bit
Colin> of typing over time.  It would also be nice if when looking at someone's
Colin> arch archive, you simply knew where to look for the latest development
Colin> version.  Moreover, various tools built upon tla could, well,
Colin> distinguish the distinguished branch.  For example, ViewARCH could put
Colin> it at the top and in bold or something.

It's a silly idea.  Assuming that such things are voteable, I'd vote
against it.  If you absolutely must have such a beast, I'd say to put that
information in some special file in the category root directory.


Colin> 
Colin> * "clone"
Colin> 
Colin> After doing this, I'd like to implement a new command "clone", which
Colin> would be quite simple; just a combination of archive-setup and tag.

Well, I don't think that you should do the prerequisite.

[snip]

Colin> Now, why do all this?  Because it all cleanly captures what I think
Colin> is the most common style of development that occurs with tla right
Colin> now; i.e. the star pattern.  For example, all the various
Colin> contributors to Rhythmbox who use tla generally follow this pattern;
Colin> we all have the same branch and version names, and we have a star
Colin> topology.

Well, good for the Rhythmbox project.  Is there any reason why you don't
have a shell script on your project's web page that performs that function
for new users?  Or create a config to do the same thing?

Colin> 
Colin> None of this is really hard to implement.  I plan to do it fairly soon,
Colin> unless someone raises an objection or thinks of something that could be
Colin> done better.

It's of minimal utility to place that into the tla core.

-- 
 Mark A. Flacy
 Any opinions expressed above are my own.  Any facts expressed above
 are, ummm, facts.
"The problem with Forth is not that it's bad, but that it's insanely
 great at the wrong damn things." -- Bruce R. McFarling