Re: [Monotone-devel] status --brief

[Howard Spindel]

At 01:52 AM 10/1/2005, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 08:44:14PM -0700, Howard Spindel wrote:
> > I find it a bit reassuring to get the non-brief status, especially
> > when there is nothing to do and the brief status simply returns to
> > the command prompt with no output.
>
> Ah, okay, actually I think that particular thing is a bug in --brief
> -- IMO it should print "no changes" if there are no changes, similar
> to what 'monotone diff' does.
>
> Does that change your opinion either way?
>
> -- Nathaniel

Yes, but only somewhat.

Since monotone is completely based on the SHA1 keys and exposes them 
to the end user, using monotone successfully does depend on learning 
about them.  Having keys printed on all operations by default is, I 
think, a good thing.  It certainly helped me, as a rank beginner with 
monotone, get used to them and see how monotone uses them.

Why not leave the default printing the way it is now (non-brief), but 
put something in MT/options (or an LUA hook) that allows the default 
to be changed?  Alternatively, if monotone is changed to make --brief 
the default, have a way to make it non-default so I don't have to 
type --verbose or something like it everytime I issue a 
command.  Perhaps that's already in there and I just don't know about it.

I would be in favor of making --brief the automatic default if 
monotone changes so that it is usable for most use cases without the 
end user referencing keys.  That gets us back into the recent 
discussions about key readability and alternatives.

Howard