[Gnu-arch-users] Re: "Newbie-ized help"

[Stefan Monnier]

> No one is going to find his way to arch simply as a replacement for CVS.

Maybe not, but someone who's gotten used (e.g. a CVS user) to diff3
conflicts might find it hard to handle .rej files.  Or if not hard,
at least inconvenient because of the lack of good tools.

As far as I can tell, the 3 merge commands in TLA have the
following limitations:

- star-merge: no cherry-picking, need a common ancestor
- update: no cherry picking, no diff3
- replay: no diff3

I just find the middle case to be so rare as to be negligible.


        Stefan


PS: I'm dreaming of a tla-II with the following changes:

- remove `update', rename `star-merge' to `update', make --three-way
  the default.

- only provide `tagline' tagging method (it's a superset of the other
  methods anyway).

- use .arch-ids files instead of .arch-ids directories.

- Use a more compact representation (especially with fewer files) of the
  patch-log in {arch}.

- use a /address@hidden/archive/branch/subbranch/... style namespace, with no
  predefined number of components.  Replace `tla archives', `tla
  categories', `tla branches', `tla versions', `tla revisions' with
  `tla ls'.

- all/most operations take a list of files/directories to which it is
  restricted (i.e. the -- LIMIT stuff, but extended to accept directorie as
  well).

- require the use of a greedy revlib (automatically create a default one if
  needed).  No pristines.

- auto-activate an archive-cache (place it within the same location as the
  revlib, by default).

- always use a single-text-file representation for changesets (instead of
  a directory).  I guess it could just be a tarball in the worst case,
  but it has to be a single file so that pipes&redirection can be used.

- use a simpler glob-style syntax for naming conventions, so as to make it
  easier for another tool to interpret the .arch-inventory files.

- make it possible to specify special-purpose diff&patch tools for
  particular classes of files.  This would be needed for .arch-ids
  and patch-log files.