On Nov 4, 2005, at 3:42 PM, Max Battcher wrote:
Jonathon Mah wrote:
There could be a character such as ':' that would trigger a
"machine-input" or "long-input" mode, which accepts long command
names which never change. So something like this:
Shall I record this patch? (etc.): :accept
(user input starts here) ^
Other commands could
be :reject, :wait, :rejectfile, :acceptfile, :rejectremaining, :accep
tremaining, and so on. This would allow the human shortcuts to
change whilst maintaining compatibility with scripts.
When machine-friendliness is implemented (with whichever method),
one thing _must_ be present right from the beginning: a version
flag. That is, 'darcs record --command-set=1'. This will allow two
things:
1) The command set can be changed in the future whilst retaining
backward compatibility with existing scripts (by keeping
compatibility code for old command sets).
2) Backward compatibility could be broken (I'm thinking very far
into the future), and asking for an old command set would generate
an error. This is obviously infinitely more desirable than
accepting some old commands and silently failing on others.
This is an interesting solution. Verbose enough to keep too many
future changes from impacting current applications, but simple
enough that even a human can use it. Basically, to me it seems
like a fairly decent compromise from the XML input idea.
One of the things that I was thinking about when I suggested XML
inputs, and that your idea makes seem even more useful, is that
darcs could add a script-mode where it can access multiple commands
at once. In the case of using something like :commands (which is
nicely reminiscent of vim command mode) the script-mode becomes a
mini-shell, which is interesting.
Based upon your suggestions:
darcs shell
>> record :accept :reject
Some changes to a.txt
>> record :accept
Some more changes to a.txt
>> add somefile.txt
>> record -a
Added somefile
>> push :accept :accept :rejectfile
Of course, I keep joking that what darcs really needs is something
of a small query language. SQL for Darcs, anyone?
I think this conversation really points out two things about darcs:
1. The repository is a type of database.
2. We would benefit if darcs could be embedded into things (or vice
versa).
So, if darcs could be a library that applications could link into
then a gui could be built that really integrated darcs (even eclipse
is an example). The other way to go with that is to embed a language
in darcs. But, I prefer the idea of making darcs embeddable so that
you can choose your language by making bindings for libdarcs in
<insert favorite language>. This could really open up the door for
making darcs interfaces and using conflict theory in settings besides
revision control (think undo systems like in GIMP).
So....my proposal is for darcs to be an api which includes a way to
perform sql queries on the darcs repo database. Any takers?
Thanks,
Jason
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