Re: [Monotone-devel] [bikeshed] once more on bookkeeping dirs...

[Justin Patrin]

On 3/14/06, Nathaniel Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> So, one issue that came up in the discussion last week about renaming
> the monotone executable was what to do with the bookkeeping directory:
>   http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.monotone.devel/6160
> Only a few people replied, and this is something that seems to incite
> discussion more than any other naming-related issue (except for the
> executable name being too long) -- e.g., this has come up over with
> the darcs crowd repeatedly (see most recently http://bugs.darcs.net/issue129),
> svn has a special hack to let you change, etc.  So, since 0.26 isn't
> coming out for at least a week anyway (stupid end-of-term), I'd sort
> of like to hear more opinions on this, to get a sense of the community
> feeling...
>
> The essence is: do we want the bookkeeping dir to something like:
>   _MTN
>   _mtn
>   .MTN \__ If one of these names, also specify what the configuration
>   .mtn /   dir in ~ should be called
>   .MTN-bookkeeping \__ or other less stupid suffixes accepted
>   .mtn-bookkeeping /   too
>
> I guess there are probably other options, but I can't think of any.
>
> ALSO: please state not just what you _prefer_, but what you would
> consider _annoying_.  Or even _just_ what you would find annoying,
> because really, this is a stupid little point where about the best we
> can hope for is to minimize offensiveness.
>
> As a quick reminder, main arguments for underscores I know:
>   -- it's an easy way to see "in your peripheral vision" that a dir is
>      under monotone
>   -- umm... VMS compatibility ;-)
> Main arguments for leading dots:
>   -- I guess some people find the presence of a bookkeeping dir at the
>      top level distracting?
> Main arguments commonly encountered when discussing other systems (or
> that might unconsciously influence intuitions), that don't apply:
>   -- CVS dirs are totally obnoxious
>      -- yes, but that's partly because they're scattered all over the
>         tree, so the conclusion doesn't _fully_ carry over
>   -- One shouldn't hide huge space-filling files inside a . dir
>      -- monotone is one of the few DVCSes that doesn't, so never mind
>         -- well, though, I guess I could imagine
>

Here's my 2c as a user. The fact that there is only one bookkeeping
dir for monotone makes me very very happy (SVN and CVS are annoying as
hell with their per-directory bookkeeping). This makes me care a lot
less what the bookkeeping dir is named.

My gut instinct is that visible is better as it just makes me kind of
happy to see that MT dir in my checkout. ;-) I also think that the
name should be the same as whatever command name is chosen, so MTN
would be good. A leading underscore *could* be used, but I feel that
just MTN is fine.

And, after all, since there is only *one* bookkeeping dir in th eroot
of the checkout, it doesn't stop people from having an MTN dir in the
sub-dirs. Or wait...does it? I'm not sure about this as I've never
tried....

--
Justin Patrin