[Gnu-arch-users] Re: darcs vs tla

[Stefan Monnier]

>       This is not an example of tla being easier to use.  To the contrary,
>       it's an example of darcs being easier to use, in that there's only
>       one way to relocate a file in any given tree.

[ I don't care about `tla-vs-darcs' here as much as `explicit-vs-tagline'. ]

With both taglines and explicit, there is one way which alway works, namely
"tla mv".  Additionally, with taglines just `mv' works as well in many/most
cases (i.e. as long as it's applied to a directory or to a file that
contains a tagline).  Admittedly, it's not 100% so you can't just rely on
it, but it's occasionally handy.

Given that anything you can do with explicit you can also do just as easily
with taglines (and I firmly believe this is the case) the only line of
argument against taglines has to be something along the lines of "taglines
confuse users because it gives them false expectations", or "taglines are too
subtle, it's too difficult for average users to know when to use them and
when not", or "taglines tend to break when you a change in a file requires
the tagline to be changed", ...


        Stefan