Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Online book for usability

[James Blackwell]

In lists.arch.users, you wrote:
> MD> The reason cvs users have a hard time when they switch to arch isn't
> MD> because arch is so much harder -- it's because they're expecting it to
> MD> work the same as cvs.
>
> Please.
>
> I feel I'm repeating myself, but the reason why we users have so much
> trouble adapting to arch is because arch is not designed to make easy
> things easy.  Tla makes possible a lot of things that are either
> impossible or painfully difficult in cvs; however, a lot of things
> that are easy in cvs are ridiculously involved in tla.
 
>From address@hidden (Juliusz Chroboczek)
> The reason for that is that tla commands do not represent common
> tasks; they represent operations that are primitive with respect to
> the data structures that Arch uses.  For users that do not wish to
> understand these data structures (including myself), there is no logic
> behind the structure of tla's commands.
>
> For example, reverting changes to a single file is a common task; yet,
> tla requires you to write a silly pipeline to do that.  Switching to a
> different version of the tree is a common task; in tla, it requires
> four commands (undo, apply-delta, set-tree-version, redo).

The reason that reverting changes to 'a' single file(s) yet is that
_you_ haven't provided the code to do it -- yet. There's a lot of things
that a lot of people want, and by definition, its not going to get done
until its done!

With regards to switching to a different version, why wouldn't you just
get a new working copy?

Most of these sorts of complaints really boil down to three things: 

  1. The person complaining hasn't worked towards providing the wanted
  capability to arch. 

  2. The capability that the user wants is already there, and (s)he
  doesn't know about it yet.

  3. The issue is one of defaults. If half of the users want the default
  one way, and the other half want the default the other way, then half 
  of the users are going to be unhappy.


-- 
James Blackwell          Try something fun: For the next 24 hours, give
Smile more!              each person you meet a compliment!

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