[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Making microbranches popular [was: Re-linking to revlib implemented]

[James Blackwell]

> From: Aaron Bentley <address@hidden>
> Just yesterday I said "One of the best ways to get people to do what you
> want is to make it really easy".  I'm going to think about what would
> make microbranching so easy that everyone would do it.  It might be
> easier to work backwards-- some form of commit that takes a branch as
> the argument, then commits the changes to both the current tree and the
> specified branches.

One of the things that seems to steer users away from creating
microbranches is a fear of cruft. Speaking for myself, I felt this very
strongly when I first started branching. I've also heard others speak of
this.

We could solve this (thusly encouraging microbranches even more) by
providing a method for users to "hide" no longer active portions of an
archive.

Execution of this would require two parts: 

1. Somewhere, somehow store data about what versions are to be hidden.
If we agreed this was something worth doing, one of the ways we could do
this is to create .arch-params/=hidden-trees. In hidden-trees, one could
add lines that ranged everywhere from a unqualified package to a fully
qualified version. 

2. Teach [ar]browse how to ignore the cat/archive/version listed in #1. 
This would be trivial to do in rbrowse (complete with regex support for
=hidden-trees). Its doable in abrowse too, but I think rbrowse is just
about at the point where we can seriously discuss deprecating and
eventually removing abrowse. Are there other commands that would need
work for this idea to work?

One of arch's falsely percieved achilles heels is that one can't make
mistakes go away. Though this perception is a false one, it is a
persistant one. For each newbie that we teach 'dead branches are O.K.', 
two more take his spot and ask why they can't make dead branches go
away.

Basically, its a security blanket for the kids until they grow into arch
enough to realize they look silly carrying a security blanket around. :) 


-- 
James Blackwell      Using I.T. to bring more             570-407-0488
Owner, Inframix      business to your business     http://inframix.com

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