Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: Keyword substitution?

[Todd A. Jacobs]

On Tue, Aug 02, 2005 at 06:55:42PM +0100, Bruce Stephens wrote:

> Under what circumstances would you have a naked file like that?
> Wouldn't the usual case be a tree of files, which could presumably
> contain the MT directory?  Or a tree somehow exported, which could
> include revision information (once it was decided what would be useful
> to include)?

Mostly under the exported scenario. Web pages, scripts, articles, FAQs, 
etc. are often kept under version control, but are "passed around" 
outside of the VCS.

> And if you did have a naked file, why would it be useful to determine
> exactly where it came from?  What are you going to do, that knowing
> that would help?  

While currently offline due to a hard drive failure, I keep a large 
archive of shell scripts available via a web interface for people to 
download. The scripts are maintained under version control, but are not 
intended to be collected or distributed as a tree; people download and 
use the ones they like.

I often get patches sent to me. Without being able to identify what 
revision they were based off of, I can't simply merge them on a "bugfix 
branch." I'd have to merge them against the head, which isn't always the 
right thing to do.

Granted, this is only an example based on how *I* typically use VCS, but 
I think the issue of identifying revisions for branch merging of 
external (e.g. non-monotone) patches is universal enough to warrant 
attention.

> I suspect it's just as likely that you'd have some file (a script or
> bit of config or something) that came from some revision but had
> (possibly) been changed a little.  You'd want to know where it came
> from to know how it had been changed, and perhaps how it had been
> revised in the repository.  And in that case searching for its hash
> would likely be a waste of time, because it's probably been changed.
> Having a keyword of some kind might help, in that case.

Yes, that's exactly it. :) And of course, in a widely-distributed 
monotone group, some people may or may not be tracking various branches 
so being able to tell which repository a particular file came from would 
be helpful, too.

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