Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: not everyone likes implicit shortcuts

[Robert Collins]

On Mon, 2003-11-10 at 06:47, address@hidden wrote:
> Right, except for the little part that that will not help solve the problem
> of newbees starting to learn the tool.  You still have to learn the correct
> way before you can be pointed to these shortcuts you want them to create.
> 
> The shortcuts and aliases have to be part of tla if that problem is to be
> solved.

I disagree. Lets assume that overarch exists. And lets further assume
that it's been designed to be a well-intentioned, interactive, 'usable'
tool.

Overarch can then provide all of the defaults you could dream of. It can
interrogate the user as to the expected working mode. It can be chatty -
'no branch to merge from was specified. Star merge brings in the changes
from another branch... your project tree has recently brought in changes
from [list] branches. Type a number to select the branch, or 0 to
abort'.

I'm not aware of -any- Linux newbies that use 'Linux'. They use libc.
They use KDE. Or Gnome. Or bash. The core tool, the expert tool that
makes conservative choices and needs explicit instruction, is not used
directly by the vast majority of users. 

But the tools layered on top are used by nearly everyone.

I get the impression that the expected introduction to tla for a project
is something like this:
* Download tla from <here>.
* Compile via these instructions <here>.
* Install via make install.
{
* Follow the Tutorial to learn it.
* Now branch off my archive
-or-
* Follow these pre-canned steps to get the projects sources
}

and newbies go off the rails.

Newbies that start new archives on their own have an even harder time.

Whats so wrong about this instead?:
* Grab a binary of 'arch-tools', or install (and here's a shell script
to grab the sources, build and install for you).
* Ditto for tla. (or any backend implementation you care to use).
{
* type overlord help to get started
- or for a project
* untar <project>-config.tar.bz2 in '~/.arch-params'
* type overlord update-project project
* type overload help
}

arch-tools doesn't exist today... So?

Rob
-- 
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