Re: [Monotone-devel] mtn copy anyone?

[Ben Walton]

On 8/18/07, Markus Schiltknecht <address@hidden> wrote:
> Over time and considering importing or exporting to other VCSes, that
> will provoke an ever nastier mess, IMO. The purpose of a VCS is to keep
> track of history, not to write a textual log and let the user figure
> what history looks like.
>
> Why can't we provide both copy-like operations with the different merge
> semantics and let the user choose what she wants?
>
>   - a snapshot copying command, which does not merge future changes from
> the source file to the target file. (symmetric?)
>
>   - a branch copying command, which - sort of - branches a single file
> and merges changes to the source. (asymmetric?)
>

I guess the first question to answer is what use case is more
prevalent.  In my particular case, all I wanted is a shortcut for cp
&& mtn add  (I'm not concerned with the history in this instance, just
the document template).  I could see though where in various cases, it
might be useful to split a source file into several smaller files, so
having the previous history apply to the newly copied file would also
be nice.  Which is more prevalent?  Both _could_ be supported


> Of course, both methods bring up some things to think about. I'm
> brainstorming somewhat on that:
>
> What if a user no longer wants to merge the changes from the source
> file, i.e. 'detach' it? Can we do that for real branches? No, we don't
> really need to, because merging is an explicit operation and not done
> automatically. We could do the same for copied file and require further
>   merges to be done explicitly. OTOH, snapshot coping would always give
> you a way to 'detach' the file again.
>
> Wouldn't the snapshot copying ability solve the DieDieDie merge problem?
> To revoke a deleted file, do a snapshot copy from the revision where the
> file still existed and merge that with your new head.

I haven't had a chance to sit down and read the HistoryBlueSky page
yet (2 kids under 2 will suck time like crazy), but I'm working on
getting that digested and will then comment more.

Thanks
-ben

-- 
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Ben Walton <address@hidden>

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When
many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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