Re: [Monotone-devel] annotate --brief

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 03:22:19AM +0100, Thomas Moschny wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> here's a the output of 'mtn annotate README':
> 
>  86c60af1.. by tromey 2003-09-06: If you've downloaded a release, see INSTALL 
> for installation
>                                 : instructions.  If you've checked this out, 
> the generated files are not
>                                 : included, and you must use "autoreconf 
> --install" to create them.
> 276264b0.. by graydon 2003-09-04:
>                                 : "make html" for docs, or read the .info 
> file and / or man page.
>                                 :
> 
> and that's the output of 'mtn annotate --brief README':
> 
> 86c60af158ab03c89af31bbad1912946a41716d2: If you've downloaded a release, see 
> INSTALL for installation
> 86c60af158ab03c89af31bbad1912946a41716d2: instructions.  If you've checked 
> this out, the generated files are not
> 86c60af158ab03c89af31bbad1912946a41716d2: included, and you must use 
> "autoreconf --install" to create them.
> 276264b0b3f1e70fc1835a700e6e61bdbe4c3f2f:
> 276264b0b3f1e70fc1835a700e6e61bdbe4c3f2f: "make html" for docs, or read the 
> .info file and / or man page.
> 276264b0b3f1e70fc1835a700e6e61bdbe4c3f2f:
> 
> So, do you think --brief is the correct name for that option? I do not, 
> and hence I suggest that this option is renamed to --just-revs (that's what
> the option is called internally in annotate.cc).

This situation just comes from historical reasons:
  1) 'annotate' was written, and to let us worry about getting it
     working without getting into the bikeshed of finding the perfect
     output format, we just printed full revids (easiest output format
     for postprocessing and experimenting, if nothing else)
  2) someone eventually got fed up with that and added the more
     readable format that is now the default, but was nervous about
     touching the default behaviour, so they stuck it onto the
     "--brief" flag.
  3) we eventually noticed that it was kind of silly to have --brief
     be the thing that was actually useful, so we switched the two
     formats around, creating the present situation.

What _should_ have happened in (3), but I gave up because it started
to take more than 10 minutes, was to get rid of 'annotate --brief'
altogether, and make that output available as 'automate annotate'.

So I suggest doing that now?  I think you have to do a bit of
refactoring (the annotate API is messy, I fixed some of it but it
still needs some work), but it should be straightforward enough, I
guess.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
"But suppose I am not willing to claim that.  For in fact pianos
are heavy, and very few persons can carry a piano all by themselves."