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Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.
From: |
Jeremy Fincher |
Subject: |
Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.) |
Date: |
Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:17:04 -0500 |
On Feb 17, 2005, at 5:16 AM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
I need to go to bed and sleep on this, but some random, not quite
integrated thoughts:
-- we shouldn't think of this as solving the current "branch names
should be global" maybe-problem; it mitigates it a bit, by making
it easier for people to turn poor choices for branch names into
better choices for branch names, but people can still collide
their branch names and this is a problem to most of the extent it
is in the current design.
In the current design, won't it serious muck up a database if I'm
syncing and I encounter another semantically different branch with the
same name? If that's the case, and this scheme serves to prevent that,
I'd say that *most* of the problem is handled :)
-- how much of the "people keep not choosing unique names" problem
can we solve by attempted branch names against the regexp
^.+\..+/.+$, and if they don't match that regexp printing
"Error: invalid branch name: should be of form 'host.name/branch'"
?
Oh please no. Picking good branch names is at its core a social
problem, not a technological one, and trying to use a technological
solution is just going to be an exercise in futility. Enforcing
adherence to a social policy that is (at least in some cases)
practically useless is just a recipe for alienating your users.
Despite Monotone's distributed nature, some people will be using it in
a more centralized fashion, with one main server their their project,
which hosts only their project, and with which users/developers sync
only to update the source for that project. In such a case, I don't
think it's unreasonable for there to be branches named "dev" or
"bugfix" or "main", if Monotone has a good way for users syncing up
with that server to disambiguate the branch name if they need to. I
think, in most cases, they won't need to, either because they're using
separate databases for separate projects, or because they're only
working on this one project, or because this is the only project using
Monotone, etc. Enforcing some sort of arbitrary branch naming scheme
is just going to corner us into defending a policy that, at least in
their case, *decreases* usability.
-- is the functionality to let everyone have different local branch
names, that don't necessarily correspond to their buddy's name
for the same branch, a feature?
I think so.
is the functionality where we
can no longer tell without checking some long hexstrings whether
what I mean when I say "branch foo" is the same as you mean when
you say "branch foo", really a feature?
Let's imagine both Monotone and Supybot used a scheme simliar to the
one described above. If I'm in #monotone talking about Monotone and I
mention the "dev" branch, which dev branch will you assume I'm talking
about? If I'm in #supybot talking about Supybot and I mention the
"dev" branch, which dev branch do you think the people in #supybot will
assume I'm talking about?
Anyone who speaks any natural language is *very* skilled at handling
ambiguity. I think you underestimate our ability to use context if you
think allowing per-user aliases for branch names would seriously hinder
our ability to communicate :)
-- how much will these issues be affected if we add in a security
system that lets project leaders specify on a per-project basis,
"keys foo, bar, and baz get to commit to branch ___.main; for any
key X, key X is allowed to commit to any branch under branch
___.sandboxen.X; ..." etc.? (I think of this because of someone
suggesting that renaming is important because how should they
know what the right name to use is?, and such a file could
provide such policy in a structured way.)
I would think that security measures should be associate with the
branch ID, of course, not the branch name. (The would also, ideally,
be in the database, so I, as a user, could figure out where I'm allowed
to commit, etc. just by querying the database).
Jeremy
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Ideas and questions., (continued)
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Ideas and questions., Bernhard Reiter, 2005/02/16
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Ideas and questions., Joel Rosdahl, 2005/02/16
- [Monotone-devel] Re: Ideas and questions., Bruce Stephens, 2005/02/16
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Ideas and questions., Derek Scherger, 2005/02/16
- [Monotone-devel] renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), graydon hoare, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Jeremy Fincher, 2005/02/17
- [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), graydon hoare, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Nathaniel Smith, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Jon Bright, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches, Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.),
Jeremy Fincher <=
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Jeremy Fincher, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] renaming branches, Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] renaming branches, Jeremy Fincher, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] renaming branches, Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Julio M. Merino Vidal, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Christof Petig, 2005/02/17
- Re: [Monotone-devel] renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Christof Petig, 2005/02/17
- [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), graydon hoare, 2005/02/17
- [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Peter Simons, 2005/02/18
- Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.), Nathaniel Smith, 2005/02/18