Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Automatic archive discovery, take 1

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Aaron Bentley <address@hidden>

    > I agree with the idea of providing a way of autodiscovering archives,
    > and I appreciate the notion of making it extensible.

    > I also agree that namespace issues are always subject to the possiblity
    > of corruption/dispute.  Adding another layer of indirection cannot fix
    > this, only user intervention.

On the contrary.   A level of procedural (and perhaps naming)
indirection is invaluable here.

One idea is that whenever tla sees an archive name it doesn't
recognize that it calls a single procedure to resolve that name.

Another idea is that whenever tla sees an archive name it doesn't
recognize an error is signaled.   Users have to define archive names
before using them, possibly using distinct procedures to define
different parts of the namespace.

Either approach can emulate the other but the latter approach avoids
having tla itself encourage a situations where users wind up taking
the former approach simply because they copied some of their
~/.arch-params/hooks from a random post or web site.

The latter approach is just as vulnerable to corruption as the former
-- but doesn't itself invite that corruption.   Indeed, it invites 
a recitation of what the issues are.

-t