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

[Miles Bader]

On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 05:01:40PM +0100, address@hidden wrote:
> The naming of an archive is not something I can 'understand'. Its too
> verbose (tla get is way to hard for me to do without copy-paste).

I agree that for everyday use, arch archive names are annoyingly verbose.  I
think it would be nice to have `archive aliases' (explicitly created by the
user, and user-specific) to avoid the typing, e.g.:

   tla alias-archive tom address@hidden

then I just could commands like:  tla star-merge tom/tla--devo--1.1

Of course these `aliases' should always be expanded very early by the CLI,
and should _never_ end up in any files.

> If I had to write down what parts a fully-specified archive name was
> build up from, I can't do it.  I'm pretty sure most people here either
> took quite some time to learn it, or can't do it either.

I think you must be exaggerating, becuase archive names, while rather long,
are very simple in structure -- they're just EMAIL--STRING, where it's
recommended that STRING contain a date.  At least, I hope you're
exaggerating...

> Second is that tla invented a whole new way of sending commands to the
> application.  Where most applications use '-o'/'--original' kind of
> commands tla aims for more readable ones like 'use-original'.
> While this enhances readability it has some problems.

You mean the tla sub-command names?!?  The way tla does it is basically
_traditional_ for such tools (see e.g. cvs).

> Humans are really good at pattern matching; so 'tla add-tag' is immidiately
> recognized as being the same as 'tla add', but humans have a really big
> problem doing it the other way around.
> In the end users will have to memorize the argument-names of tla to be able
> to use tla.

It's very unclear what you're complaining about here.

You seem to be arguing that having multiple `long' names for the same
command for the same concept is `hard', but that using single-letter
abbreviations is `easy,' which seems absurd...

BTW, note that for the specific `add-tag' (which is actually now `add-id')
case, I've intended to switch which command is the alias and which is the
canonical command for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it since
Tom's merging seems to have stopped.  With the recent addition of a `real'
`tla rm' command, I think the current add/remove/move-id set is confusing.
I'd like to change it to:

   add-id    ...
   remove-id ...
   move-id   ...
   add       (alias for add-id)
   rm        ... but _not_ an alias for remove-id ...
   mv        ... but _not_ an alias for move-id ...

IOW, the -id commands and the non-id commands are now distinct sets, with
different meanings (the -id commands are in some sense `more primitive'), but
add happens to be the same as add-id.

-Miles
-- 
`To alcohol!  The cause of, and solution to,
 all of life's problems' --Homer J. Simpson