Re: Removing rollback from VC mode - request for comment

[Uwe Brauer]

>> "Eric" == Eric S Raymond <address@hidden> writes:

   > I am trying to simplify and clean up the back-end API of VC mode. 
[snip]


   > Rollback is a case in point.  It is a command that lets you undo the
   > last checkin.  Only SCCS and RCS actually support it.  Git possibly 
   > could, in theory, but the Git implementation would be tricky and have 
   > sharp edges when the last revision had been pushed.

   > Here are the arguments for doing this:


   > The argument against this is simply that someone, somewhere out there,
   > might be using it on some remnant RCS repo (I think we can safely
   > consider SCCS dead to us at this point).  And the broader question is
   > whether that possibility is a dealbreaker.

   > Is it really important to support a VC-mode operation that experience
   > has shown to generally be a Bad Thing, simply to preserve backward
   > compatibility?  How do we evaluate tradeoffs when a featurectomy
   > would reduce maintenance burden and possibly improve the quality
   > of support for new systems?

   > I don't think I have a pat answer to these questions.  Discuss.

>From a very practical point of view: I use RCS on most of my longer
latex documents, as it happens (without going into details) sometimes,
not very often but often enough, the coding is scrambled during a check-in
making the LaTeX file completely useless. In that case I simply remove
the last commit and I am back in business again. Removing this feature
would be a deal breaker for me.

Uwe Brauer