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

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 12:58:08PM +0200, Jerome Fisher wrote:
> Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> >- "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...)  
> 
> BitKeeper calls this a "changeset".

I really don't like "changeset", since to me it implies something like
a recursive diff -- enough information to reconstruct a tree B given a
tree A.  The two problems being that "context"s don't exactly contain
that detailed information, and that a "context" is an end-point, not
an transition.  Changesets describe transitions.

> I think that all three terms are muddy with over-use.

Agreed.

> >- "stratum", "sherd"
> 
> I don't really like "stratum", because to me that would better describe
> multiple contexts at the same level of development.

Yeah, I have this problem too.  Not sure if its compelling.

> I'm not really keen on "sherd" (or "shard"), due to the strong
> connotations of being part of a complete whole. You could consider the
> entire ancestry graph to be a "whole", I suppose, but it's not one
> that's complete; it's (theoretically) ever-expanding.

Hmm, I actually quite like this conceptualization of a "context" as
being one piece of the complete development of a product :-)

> Has using "artifact" itself already been discussed?
> 
> >- "situation"
> >- "island"
> 
> "island", for me, has strong connotations of standing alone. That
> doesn't apply to contexts (which are based on other contexts).

But one travels between them, and stops off at one island to rest
while on the way to another...

> I can't think of any objections to "situation".
> 
> Some additional suggestions from the top of my head, in no particular order:
> 
> - "Heir"
> - "Legatee"
> - "Successor"
> - "Descendant"
> - "Usurper"
> - "Progeny"
> - "Progeniture"

These all have the common problem that they assume a point of view;
they're all talking about a "context" relative to its parents.  Things
quickly become incoherent when you want to say something like "What is
this successor's parent successor's?"

> - "Step"

Hmm, might be onto something here.  A little too generic again ("Step
2: check out step a342abf9..."), but... *checks thesaurus*

  footstep, footprint, impress, trace, track, tread, rung, feat

Hmm, "rung" has potential.  Or a neologism, like "codestep" or
something... or something like "mnode" for "monotone node"... or just
"tone"?

-- Nathaniel

-- 
Details are all that matters; God dwells there, and you never get to
see Him if you don't struggle to get them right. -- Stephen Jay Gould