Re: [Monotone-devel] Bug #21545 -- really annoying

[Richard Levitte]

In message <address@hidden> on Fri, 23 May 2008 17:11:49 +1000, William Uther 
<address@hidden> said:

willu.mailingLists> > Good idea, I like it!  However, using
willu.mailingLists> > directory_empty() can lead to confusion (': ; '
willu.mailingLists> > is my prompt):
willu.mailingLists> 
willu.mailingLists> Using ': ; ' as your prompt can lead to confusion
willu.mailingLists> too. :)

Hahaha...

A true story:
back in '94, when I worked at an ISP, my emacs session (running on
SunOS 1.4.1) suddenly disappeared.  The reason?  Someone else had a
promt looking like 'foobar> ' and had previously use emacs using the
full path:

  foobar> /usr/local/bin/emacs somefile

He wanted to make it easy for himself (and he used csh, so history
wasn't an easy thing for him), tripple-clicked on the line shown
above, and pasted:

  foobar> foobar> /usr/local/bin/emacs somefile
  csh: foobar: command not found

(ok, error line isn't exact...)
/usr/local/bin/emacs was suddenly 0 bytes...

I thought about it, and thought; how do I prevent that kind of
mistake, would I ever need to quickly cut'n'past a command line...

willu.mailingLists> Well, yes.  I noted that above:
willu.mailingLists> 
willu.mailingLists> "Currently the code doesn't look to see if all the
willu.mailingLists> files in the dir are 'ignored' - that improvement
willu.mailingLists> is left as an exercise for the reader."
willu.mailingLists> 
willu.mailingLists> The problem is that cookie~ is ignorable, and
willu.mailingLists> using directory_empty() doesn't pick this up.  I
willu.mailingLists> thought about checking for non-ignorable files.
willu.mailingLists> But even that addition doesn't solve things
willu.mailingLists> because there is no way to get
willu.mailingLists> "--no-respect-ignore" in there, so you'll be
willu.mailingLists> turning the warning off even when you shouldn't.
willu.mailingLists> 
willu.mailingLists> In the end I decided that a) people do not usually
willu.mailingLists> add a directory with ignorable files in it and no
willu.mailingLists> others, and b) it is slightly better to warn
willu.mailingLists> slightly too much than slightly too little. :)  So
willu.mailingLists> I left it simple and stupid.

OK, I can follow that rationale.

Now, considering we've just had discussions about rationales long
forgotten, I suggest you document it in the manual or so.

Cheers,
Richard

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-- 
Richard Levitte                         address@hidden
                                        http://richard.levitte.org/

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including
 the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
                                                -- C.S. Lewis