[Monotone-devel] 'workspace' vs 'tree'

[Stephen Leake]

I've always found it difficult to tell whether a command belongs in the
"workspace" group or the "tree" group.

It would seem that all commands in the 'workspace' group should modify
the workspace in some way, and all commands in 'tree' should not require
a workspace.

However, that leads to the following:

'attr' is in the 'workspace' group. In general it does not modify the
workspace, but it requires one. I guess that's because 'attr set
executable' does modify the workspace. That's a bit confusing,
especially since 'mtn:execute' is not mentioned in the command-line
help.


Commands that are in 'tree', but should be in 'workspace':

'merge_into_workspace', 'merge_into_dir', 'migrate_workspace' obviously
require and modify a workspace.

'refresh_inodeprints' requires a workspace, and is a cache of the
workspace files.

'import' creates a workspace, and is similar to 'commit'.

'checkout' creates a workspace, and does not change the database.

-- 
-- Stephe