Fwd: [Monotone-devel] One-step checkouts?

[Eric Kidd]

On 6/30/05, Tomas Fasth <address@hidden> wrote:
> My personal opinion is that those three initial steps above are
> essential for the understanding of how monotone works. It may not do
> any good in the long run to hide this from a newcomer.

Well, speaking as an open source developer who'd like to attract users
and contributors, my goal is to make initial checkout as painless as
possible.

My users typically want the latest head revision, not an education in
how to use monotone. :-) When they're itching for source code, details
of the version control system are just a headache.

Brian's simplified three-step checkout is a major improvement--it's
considerably less ugly than the one in the manual--but it could be
simplified even further.

Here are some random suggestions. Some of them are undoubtly really bad ideas.

Random thought #1: Don't require users to type the --db parameter three times.

  $ export MONOTONEDB=monotone.db
  $ monotone db init
  $ monotone pull venge.net net.venge.monotone
  $ monotone co monotone -b net.venge.monotone

Random thought #2: Consider combining "db init" and "pull" into a
single command:

  $ monotone -d monotone.db mirror venge.net net.venge.monotone
  $ monotone -d monotone.db co monotone -b net.venge.monotone

Random thought #3: Default the branch to the collection we just pulled:

  $ monotone -d monotone.db db.init
  $ monotone -d monotone.db pull venge.net net.venge.monotone
  $ monotone -d monotone.db co monotone

You could even combine any or all of the above:

  $ export MONOTONEDB=monotone.db
  $ monotone mirror venge.net net.venge.monotone
  $ monotone co monotone

It might even be possible to combine the server name and collection
into a single URL.

First impressions matter, both for monotone and for projects which
decide to use monotone. In general, monotone makes a clunky first
impression (lots of setup; lots of commands; *really* *slow* netsync),
but it's quite reasonable once it's up and running.

Cheers,
Eric