Re: [Gnu-arch-users] taglines

[Miles Bader]

2005/10/16, Matthew Hannigan <address@hidden>:
> > I (and presumably the list) would really be interested in reading what
> > those problems with tagline inventory mode were.
>
> Have a look at Colin Walters comments on the wiki:
>
>         http://wiki.gnuarch.org/ID_2dtagging_20methods

Colin's arguments are very weak in practice.  _No_ method [*] will
solve this problem for you in a way that will catch all cases and get
them all right.  The advantage of taglines is that for _typical_
projects --- which consist of 98% source code -- taglines get very
close to being perfect.  Colin argues that because taglines can't
perfectly handle the last 2% (though even in these 2% cases, it merely
falls back to one of the other methods!) you ought to chuck them and
use something else -- even though the alternatives are _always_ worse!

Gee now that I think about it, his arguments are downright silly.

[To be honest, Colin's arguments actually sound more like a weak
attempt to justify a dislike of taglines for other reasons, though I
don't know what those would be.]

To my mind the best reason to not like taglines is simply because
they're part of the source, and much less useful when you're using
arch to track a project where you do not have the ability to add them
to the sources (this is Martin's main argument I guess).  Some people
apparently try to dynamically add taglines to only their local version
of the source, but this sounds like it might be pretty hairy.

[*] At least of the methods being discussed here: taglines,
user-specified "rename recording" (traditional "rcs-cmd mv" method),
and "guessing based on content" (git).

-miles
--
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.