Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: BUG: feature request: 'tla chmod' which 'touch'es files

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, 2004-09-25 at 11:34, Mark Stosberg wrote:
> On 2004-09-24, Zenaan Harkness <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> > Trying to create a shared revlib when initial permissions were not set
> > up as group +rw(x) has been a long, messy and at times quite frustrating
> > experience for me.
> >
> > Too many times I've been bitten by chmod not 'touch'ing the
> > corresponding file, and therefore not propagating the perms change into
> > the commit.
> >
> > A function like the following would probably do the trick:
> >
> > tla-chmod
> > {
> >     chmod $@
> >     touch $@
> > }
> 
> I don't think this adds much value to 'tla' as the 100th-and-something
> sub-command. It does nothing tla-specific. It sounds like either some
> other 'tla' command should be chmod'ing and touch'ing files
> automatically, or you could use a shell alias for 'chmod-n-touch'.
> 
> It does seem like a reasonable idea for 'chmod' to 'touch' a file if you
> want it to, so perhaps patching chmod with "--touch" flag could even
> make sense. 

I disagree.

tla subcommands that mirror Unix commands for manipulating files are

1) easy to remember, eg:
  tla rm
  tla rmdir
  tla mv
  tla cp
  tla chmod


2) Do The Right Thing w.r.t. arch/tla (very important for newbies).
When should "write a script" be the answer and when should
"tla should provide it" be the answer?


3) Bitkeeper provides this level of intuitive "it just works"ness:

---
$ bk help chmod
bk chmod(1)                 BitKeeper User's Manual                bk chmod(1)

NAME
       bk chmod - change the mode of a file and save it

SYNOPSIS
       bk chmod <[ugoa]+rwxs> <file> [<file> ...]
       bk chmod <[ugoa]-rwxs> <file> [<file> ...]
       bk chmod <[ugoa]=rwxs> <file> [<file> ...]
       bk chmod <octal> <file> [<file> ...]

DESCRIPTION
       The chmod command changes the stored file modes for files in the repos-
       itory.  File modes are normally whatever  the  file  was  when  it  was
       checked in to BitKeeper.  When changes to the mode need to be made, the
       bk chmod command is used to record the new permissions.

       The permission syntax is one of

       [ugoa]+rwxs
              A symbolic way of adding permissions.  The prefix before the "+"
              indicates the users to which the permissions apply: "u" is user,
              "g" is group, "o" is other, "a" is all.  If none  are  specified
              the  default  is  "a".   The postfix after the "+" indicates the
              permission to add: "r" is read, "w" is write,  "x"  is  execute,
              "s" is setuid or setgid depending on the prefix.

       [ugoa]-rwxs
              A symbolic way of removing permissions.  As above.

       [ugoa]=rwxs
              A symbolic way of setting permissions absolutely.  As above.

       octal  A  4  digit octal number wherein 04000 means setuid, 02000 means
              setgid, and in the following 3 digits 4 means read permission, 2
              means  write  permission,  and  1 means execute permission.  The
              last three digits are for user, group, other permissions respec-
              tively.   This  form  sets  the permission absolutely, it is not
              relative to the previously recorded permission.

NOTE
       Write permission is somewhat  pointless  since  BitKeeper  will  remove
       write permission if the file is checked out unlocked and add write per-
       mission if the file is checked out with a lock.

SEE ALSO
       bk help admin
       bk help prs

CATEGORY
       File

BitMover, Inc                     2003/08/08                       bk chmod(1)
---


Finally, there are other things that are what I'd call "intuitive"
from the bitkeeper UI, such as "bk diff" which has intelligence
about interpreting the arguments passed to it, to simplify
seeing the differences between two versions of a file.
Eg. in tla, it could perhaps recognize things such as:

tla diff myversion--patch-N filename
tla diff my-branch--myversion--patch-N patch-M
tla diff address@hidden/c--b--v file
etc
etc

cheers
zen