Re: [Monotone-devel] 0.48 rants

[Francis Russell]

Some of these messages are starting to scare me somewhat, especially the
ones that suggest that monotone take even more responsibility to start
passing options to the editor to jump to appropriate places or include
file globbing syntax in the commit template. This is supposed to simply
be a changelog editor. Adding the ability to edit other certs seems
logical but anything beyond that strikes me as crazy. I've been using
monotone for years and I've never been as concerned about monotone
development as I am right now, and I haven't seen any indications
whatsoever about what the new changelog template may look like. Here's
my suggested commit template format. Please comment, if only to shoot
everything down.

"

*** REMOVE THIS LINE TO CANCEL THE COMMIT ***
--Edit fields beneath this line to modify certificate values--
Branch:   uk.co.unchartedbackwaters.simple_cfd.tensor.expr.cse
Author:   Francis Russell <address@hidden>
Date:     21/07/10 13:35:29

--Modifications under line are ignored entirely--
Changes against parent bd846e89bef8324b758f8a2c6e7dde41aa4ddd9d

  patched  include/simple_cfd/cse/cse_optimiser.hpp
  patched  include/simple_cfd/numeric/ginac_expression.hpp
"

Main arguments:

- Keeping the changelog message at the top requires no scrolling or
anything else and allows instant typing of changelog message in most
editors. I really dislike any of these arguments about thinking time.
We're supposed to be trying to help to user do things as quickly as
possible and I find myself thinking more about how to get to the
Changelog: token than the commit itself.
- Keeping the changelog at the top permits arbitrary whitespace at the
start of the message as it's obvious how it will be interpreted. I guess
newlines should be stripped at the end (I'm unsure what 0.47 behaviour was).
- The editable section now only includes certificates. Revison and
parent aren't certificates and aren't editable and it seems confusing to
 mix them with editable values. Furthermore, the parent revision is
replicated in the entirely discarded section anyway.
- The new revision ID is removed entirely because as people have pointed
out, there's almost no use for it.
- At least to me, parsing is obvious. That is, similar to the svn commit
message (and probably other systems), the delimiting tokens actually
describe themselves and provide the help text. I found the 0.48 template:
  - Confusingly mixed editable and non-editable information.
  - Used delimiters between sections that weren't easily inferable. e.g.
    "Changlog:" at the start of a line to begin the commit message, and
    line of dashes to end it (I think).

Francis