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

[Václav Haisman]

Nathaniel Smith 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
Leading underscore has precedence in Darcs. They use _darcs. I don't
like all uppercase so I vote "_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 
> 
> Cheers,
> -- Nathaniel
> 

VH

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