[Gnu-arch-users] Re: [GNU-arch-dev] Re: GNU Arch status update

[Cameron Patrick]

Tom Lord wrote:

>          - fails, crashes and burns horribly if signature generation fails
> 
> I've created a bug, `commit-signature-crash', for this.  I trust that
> this is easy to reproduce (e.g., I could change a signing rule to "exit 1"
> and see it) but, that I or another programmer will have to do so in order
> to understand what you are referring to makes this bug more expensive for
> us to work on.   A little bit more information about the nature of 
> what you mean by "fails, crashes and burns horribly" /might/ be a
> big win.

It leaves the revision locked in the archive and ,,foo temporary
directories lying around in the project tree, from memory.  A pain
when you mistype your GPG passphrase.

>    tla tag:
>          - default the '-S' switch to on
>    tla import:
>          - default the '-S' switch to on
> 
> Can you think of a different request that would satisfy you instead?
> 
> Those changes would lower the barrier to allowing simple typos to 
> muck up an otherwise perfectly clean archive and so I have not created
> a bug report for them.

This claim cropped up last time making -S the default was suggested,
but it seems a bit odd to me, for a couple of reasons.  One is that I
almost alwasy type 'tla tag -S' or 'tla import -S' rather than just
tag or import; so making -S the default would simply save typing
time.  The other is that you've got to type the revision name when you
run archive-setup by hand anyway, and I'd have thought that the
probability of making a typo there would be the same as making a typo
when running tag/import.

> Are you sure that fixing `help-too-long' isn't enough to answer
> your concerns in this area?

Out of curiosity, do you have a particular approach in mind for fixing
this one?  I did a bit of work last year at restructuring the help
into various subcategories, but it fell by the wayside a bit (I lost
enthusiasm and found other commitments).  I also think that rather
than just shortening the help text, a lot of the command descriptions
could also be clarified.

e.g. "tla import" says "archive a full-source base-0 revision" which
while is both rather mystifying to one unfamiliar with arch, and also
technically inaccurate (I think... pretty sure you can have import
revisions other than base-0).

Cameron.

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