[Gnu-arch-users] Losing information in *.rej

[Stefan Monnier]

I think an important aspect of a revision control system is to try to make
it difficult for the user to lose information.
In this respect, `tla' has a weak spot: the handling of conflicts.

I think tla should be more careful to refuse to commit/update/replay/merge
a file if it still has an associated .rej.  Or at least should make it
difficult (i.e. reuse to do it unless the user provides a --force flag).

I've just gone through a `tla replay' that replaced a bunch of non-resolved
.rej files with others and it's pretty messy now.  Maybe you'll say I was
an idiot and tla shouldn't prevent me from shooting my own foot, but at
least former CVS users will appreciate.  Along the same lines `tla changes'
might list files with pending .rej files as `C' to indicate that they have
unresolved conflicts.

It seems that the .rej files that got replaced by `tla replay' have not
been destroyed but renamed, which is good, but I don't think it's
sufficient because I don't have the corresponding source file any more and
trying to find those old .rej files and figure out what to apply in which
order is nastier than I'd like.

If you like the current behavior, than instead of a --force, you could
add an --idiot-safety-belt flag.


        Stefan