[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Should "baz diff" provide a summary at the beginning? (Re: tla changes vs. baz status)

[Matthieu Moy]

Miles Bader <address@hidden> writes:

> tla sometimes gets this right ("changes"), and sometimes not
> ("show-changeset");

I think the problem goes far beyond tla changes Vs baz status: We
really need a unified way to represent changesets (baz status not only
displays changesets, but also information like conflicts and tree-lint
warnings, so, by "changeset", I mean here "changeset and potentially
additional information"). One compact and therefore incomplete, and
one which is just a serialization of a changeset, with bidirectional
conversions.

In tla, depending on the command, you get "-" or "--" for metadata
changes, "changes" and "show-changeset" are completely
inconsistant, ... Up to now, baz fails to make the situation really
better.

Actually, the outputs of tla and baz are mainly lists of revisions and
list of files with some information attached on it. I've worked on
revision lists unification (now merged in baz 1.5). I think the same
kind of unification needs to be done for list of files.

I suggest something like this:

1st column is the type of change:
 M: Modified
 >: Moved
 A: Added
 D: Deleted
 P: Permission change

2nd column is the type of file:
 ' ': Normal file
 /: Directory
 @: Link

3rd column give additional information:
 C: Conflicts
 I: Duplicate ID
 &: Broken link
 ...

(I'm wondering if we should add inventory information ([SPJBT]) here)

4th column is a space

File name starts at the 5th column.

Commands can display or not the information. For example, "changes"
may leave a space anyway in the 3rd column, while "status" would
actually use it.

Additional info (like new name for renames) can come after the file
name.

(I'm not saying this is the perfect choice, but this is to give an
idea of the kind of thing I would expect)

Such decision should be taken together with the bazaar-ng team, since
it would be great to have the same "standardized" format.

-- 
Matthieu