Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Low level vs. high level UI

[Aaron Bentley]

Pierce T. Wetter III wrote:

> On Feb 25, 2004, at 4:00 PM, Aaron Bentley wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 16:35, Pierce T. Wetter III wrote:
> > set of documentation would just get out-of-sync fast.
>
>
>   Sure, but perhaps you can mention aba help in the readme, as I found 
> it by accident.

Okay.  Done.

> > > I think its sometimes good to sit down and
> > > think:
> > >
> > >     Ok, what do I do all the time in arch?
> > >     How could that be more automatic?
> >
> >
> > My objective with aba is to lower the barrier to entry, so that the
> > first time you think "I do this a lot", you go and write an aba command.
>
>
>   Well, that makes it easier to use. Lowering the barrier to entry 
> would be aba + a lot of contributed commands.

Oh, I meant lowering the barrier for creating wrappers by providing a 
framework and template.  It's not specifically aimed at new users.  It's 
specifically aimed at me.

> > >   Ah, what are the 7 commands you use.
> >
> > tla update,
> > aba diff [tla changes --diffs],
> > aba elog [$EDITOR $(tla make-log)],
> > tla commit,
> > aba merge [tla star-merge $(cat $(tla tree-root)/++merge-source))],
> > tla archive-mirror,
> > aba branch-this.
>
>
>  Funny that 4 of them are aba commands.

Sure.  I wrote aba because I wanted to use it.  Note that "diff" and 
"elog" are trivial, though.

>   Maybe we can talk offline about how YOU work with tla, and I can 
> rough out some aba commands to work that way.

Oh, I'm pretty good about writing commands for myself.

> > >    Well, like if I wanted a branch:
> > >
> > >     projects--fixingpunctuation--1.2 in archive:
> >
> >
> > Which archive? You can't branch into jblack's archive, only he can.
>
>
>   Perhaps aba should figure that out for me?

It looked as if you'd forgotten to write something after "archive:"  Of 
course, tla (and therefor aba) will use your default, unless you specify 
otherwise.

> > >    aba branch-this fixingpunctuation
> > >
> > >    would let you use
> > >
> > >   aba get ^fixingpunctuation
> > >
> > >   because that would expand to:
> > >
> > >   tla get address@hidden/projects--fixingpunctuation--1.2
> > >
> > >   Does that make a little more sense?
> >
> >
> > Not really.  Because if it's your default archive, you can use
> > tla get projects--fixingpunctuation.  And if it's not your archive, you
> > can't branch into it at all.  The only case I can see for it is for a
> > non-default archive that you own.
>
>
>   Perhaps the get is a bad example. What about later on if you wanted 
> to do something else with the branch?

Pretty well every command will assume your default archive, unless you 
say different.  So an alias won't dramatically reduce the length.

Aaron