[Monotone-devel] Re: Nested projects in workspace

[Bruce Stephens]

Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

> There is another approach built into monotone.  If you consider having
> each sub-project in their own branches (let's call them A, B, C and so
> on for the sake of simplicity), and then a branch called COMMON for
> the common tree.  With such a construct, each sub-project can be
> introduced into COMMON as follows:
>
>       mtn merge_into_dir A COMMON proj-A-dir
>       mtn merge_into_dir B COMMON proj-B-dir
>       mtn merge_into_dir C COMMON proj-C-dir
>
> Of course, the COMMON branch is a project of its own, and can have
> it's own files and so on alongside the sub-project directories.
>
> To apply changes made later on in the sub-project's own branch, a
> propagate does the trick:
>
>       mtn propagate A COMMON
>
> The result is that anyone that checks out the COMMON project will
> automatically get all required sub-projects along with it.  There's no
> need to keep track of special instructions to create the common tree.

I think in the specific use case, the extra directories are things
that aren't required.

That is, there's some common stuff, and there's a space for me to put
stuff in a directory if I want, and then that'll get built, too.

So I think to use merge_into_dir in this case, each user would need to
branch COMMON, then use merge_into_dir to merge in their directories.

That would work OK, although it doesn't seem likely to be as
convenient to me as just checking out my project inside a checkout of
COMMON: if I do that, then I can make modifications and commit them
right in a buildable tree.  With the merge_into_dir case, as far as I
understand it the merged-in branches are supposed to be modified in
their individual branches, and propagated to the common one.  But in
this case, I think the common one is the only one that's usable.

So I think merge_into_dir wouldn't really work for this, unless I'm
misunderstanding something (which is entirely possible: I've not
actually used merge_into_dir, but I use nested checkouts regularly)?