Re: [Gnu-arch-users] "Newbie-ized help"

[Aaron Bentley]

Miles Bader wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 05:43:21PM -0400, Aaron Bentley wrote:
>
> > If we're dropping merge commands, we should drop 'update'.  star-merge 
> > can be used anywhere update can, but update isn't as flexible.
>
>
> Man, you've really got some kind of thing against update -- first you screw
> up its semantics in "fai", now you argue for dropping it from the help...

Yeah, tla update looks like an appendix to me.  Not the best way to 
update to the latest revision, not the best way to merge another 
version.  Fai update is more like CVS update.  On the other hand, I 
think the fai merge algorithm is better than star-merge, too.

> It's _not the same_ as star-merge when used in the same context.

Right.  star-merge does the right thing in every context that update 
does, plus some that update gets wrong.  The fact that rejects go the 
other way seems relatively unimportant.

> Does that mean newbies need it?  I don't know -- but certainly the name
> "update" is a lot more newbie friendly than "star-merge" for the simple
> "update my tree" use.

Agreed.  I'm not sure we should be considering names more important than 
functionality, though.  Maybe star-merge could be named something more 
friendly.

Aaron