Re: [Monotone-devel] Command aliases and removing command expansion from monotone

[Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker]

In message <address@hidden> on Wed, 14 Dec 2005 15:31:39 +1300, Matthew Gregan 
<address@hidden> said:

kinetik> While discussing the current behaviour of 'monotone revert'
kinetik> (see Alex's email about the possibility of losing work too
kinetik> easily) on #monotone, the idea of removing the automatic
kinetik> command expansion from monotone was discussed.

Hmm, this is a matter of philosophy, really.  Coming from the VMS
world, where keyword expansion is standard, I really see no problems
with it.  I've lived with that since 1990, and yes, there have been
some keywords where you have to write one more character to make it
unambiguous after a while.

The only "problem" would be if someone is silly enough to rely on
abbreviations in scripts.  We could easily make a recommendation for
any script author to use unabbreviated commands (not that I consider
an alias a unabbreviated command).

kinetik> Note that the command expansion does not work for second
kinetik> level commands, so "monotone db inf" is not expanded to
kinetik> "monotone db info", and will error out by displaying the
kinetik> usage for the db command.

That's an inconsistency that we can correct.  I'll see into it as soon
as I have a moment...  (uhmm, and if I remember...).

kinetik> While convenient, command expansion does not lead to a stable
kinetik> UI that is safe for users to rely on (in fact, we have a
kinetik> bug[0] about this).

That's a case when we could add the proposed alias, if that's
desirable.

kinetik> Given this, I suggest that we remove automatic command
kinetik> expansion behaviour from monotone, and ensure that any
kinetik> commonly used commands have sane and consistent aliases.

I disagree with removing keyword expansion.  I agree that some aliases
can be added to ensure that certain shortcuts always work.

Cheers,
Richard

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Richard Levitte                         address@hidden
                                        http://richard.levitte.org/

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including
 the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
                                                -- C.S. Lewis