[Monotone-devel] A better name for "context"

[Nathaniel Smith]

The "context" support Graydon's working on is really cool.  But the
name kind of sucks.  "Context" is vague, and wishy-washy, and
ambiguous, and it's such a core entity that we really should do
better.

Ideally we should have a name that's short, and concrete, and rolls
off the tongue -- one that is clear and unambiguous.  A little bit
quirky is okay; if it's quirky then it will become a name, not just a
description, and a name's what we want in order to make the concept
concrete in people's heads.

Just to remind people -- the thing we're trying to find a name for is
what's previously been called a "context".  This is a new database
entity, different from the ones that currently exist in monotone; it
encapsulates both a manifest its ancestry information in one object.
Internally there will still be manifests, but from the user's point of
view, "contexts" will replace manifests; everywhere you put in a
manifest id today you will put in a "context" id tomorrow.

There's been some brainstorming on IRC for a good name for this.  I'll
list some of the ones I liked from that, and then people can make
their own suggestions and argue about which is best...

- "version", "revision"

  This is traditional (it's what, e.g., CVS and Subversion call the
  analogous thing, I guess Arch too), but I don't like it, because if
  I say "what version/revision are you using?", you can't tell whether
  I mean the VCS version or the software release version.  (This has
  presumably been less of a problem in the past, since VCS versions
  have traditionally been pretty useless to ask about...)

- "treestate"

  Kinda ambiguous with "manifest", maybe, dunno.

- "node"

  A very generic term (there are _lots_ of things that get called
  nodes), but nice and monosyllabic and concrete.

- "stratum", "sherd"

  I kind of like the archeology metaphor; we already talk about
  software "artifacts" and "digging through old changes"; why not
  steal some more words?  ("stratum" refers to a layer of dirt; as you
  dig down through the earth, each stratum corresponds to a particular
  period of time.  "sherd" means a piece of broken pottery, one of the
  most common artifacts found while doing said digging.  It might be
  bad to imply the corresponding software is broken, but then, all
  software but TeX _is_ broken, so... :-))

- "situation"
- "island"

  No real comments on these.  Kinda like them.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
"On arrival in my ward I was immediately served with lunch. `This is
what you ordered yesterday.' I pointed out that I had just arrived,
only to be told: `This is what your bed ordered.'"
  -- Letter to the Editor, The Times, September 2000