Max Battcher wrote:
> I'm probably similarly confused as Eric, if not more so... Excuse my
> ignorance here, but I am interested in the practical repercussions of
> these discussions even if I can't bring much to the table on the
> theoretical side.
>
>> Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:
>>> In any case, I once again would like to stress that it is my belief that
>>> commutation is already too complicated to be a suitable foundation for
>>> understanding the semantics of merges.
>>>
>>> In other words, thinking about the intricacies of commutation is a waste
>>> of our precious brain cycles. :) They are better spent on a simpler
>>> formalization where each line has its own GUID.
>
> A GUID for each line? Is this primarily to make the proofs of darcs
> theory better sync with OT (and/or other similar theories), or is this
> also a practical concern?
Theory, mostly.
> That is, is the assertion here that darcs itself should use a GUID for
> every single line? Wouldn't that be woefully inefficient?
Yes and yes. That's why a more efficient representation or maybe
backporting GUIDs to commutations might be probably necessary.
> From a purely layman's standpoint it seems to me that as intricate as
> darcs commutation can get it appears to get the job done and that GUID's
> are rarely the answer to anything (other than how do we embroil this
> existing system with lots of rarely used cryptic strings).
Well, it gets the job done until you're trying to do heavy merges ...
I'm no fan of cryptic numbers, I just mean some scheme with some unique
identifiers. The advantage of IDs is the following: in the current
system, you have to change the patch representation when performing a
commutation
Insert "foo" before line 1
Change line 2 from "bar" to "baz"
<->
Change line 1 from "bar" to "baz"
Insert "foo" before line 1
But with IDs, the representation can stay the same
Create new line called B
Set text of B to "foo"
Link B as previous line of A
Change text of line A from "bar" to "baz"
<->
Change text of line A from "bar" to "baz"
Create new line called B
Set text of B to "foo"
Link B as previous line of A
which makes it much easier to reason about.
Regards,
apfelmus
--
http://apfelmus.nfshost.com
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