Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Auto-registration

[Aaron Bentley]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 14:53, Robert Collins wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-02-06 at 06:37, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> 
> > Using aba, you can currently do:
> > 
> > aba auto-get address@hidden/emacs--cvs-trunk
> > 
> 
> This depends on the archive registry, which a syntax with
> location/category--branch[--version] doesn't.
> 
> That said, both tla grab, and config-manager's build support -nearly-
> this already.

"tla grab" looks like The Right Way, but it's severely under-documented,
and also under-used.

aba's all about doing things the easy way, not the right way.  It's
about solving problems now, perhaps badly, rather than waiting for a
Right answer.  I hope that it can serve as a testing ground for ideas,
as a working prototype for functionality that might eventually get into
tla.  But I recognize that easy access to The Wrong Answer can hinder
the success of The Right Answer, and I do consider that a negative.

Reliance on a central registry has pros and cons:
- Uses identifiers instead of locations, so locations can vary
- Gives extra power to registrars

I've also considered working on a geturl command, as the OP wanted. 
Why?  Because archive locations are required to exist, and grab files
are not.  (But why not?  Can't they be automatically created as part of
the archive?)

Aaron

-- 
Aaron Bentley
Director of Technology
PanoMetrics, Inc.