"Derek R. Price" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> if we go with '@', I'm going to say date@branch is probably the more
> generally intuitive way to select a point (date) on a branch due to
> the meaning already assigned to '@' in other (non-cvs) contexts.
Ah, interesting. Perhaps you're thinking of email addresses
USER@DOMAIN, with USER being subordinate to DOMAIN on the system, and
likewise DATE is subordinate to BRANCH, hence DATE@BRANCH. I can see
that, but doesn't USER@DOMAIN scan only because of the identification
of USER with a person, and DOMAIN with a place? USER@DOMAIN thus
means "a person at a place", which is a case of expressing
primary-then-secondary, not vice versa as USER@DOMAIN seems at first
glance to suggest.
With BRANCH and DATE, I think primary-then-secondary is also the way
do go. This is why I think BRANCH@DATE is more intuitive.
1. BRANCH@DATE is English-like, with "@" pronounced "at" and meaning
"as of", so BRANCH@DATE reads like: "the state of BRANCH (a project,
task, release, etc.) at DATE." How do you read DATE@BRANCH?
2. The branch feels to me like a higher organizing principle than the
point in time. Each branch is a copy of the universe, and has its own
timeline.
branch > year > month > day > hour > minute > second
BRANCH is a coarse specification. YEAR refines it, MONTH refines it
further, etc.
3. A branch has concrete and useful meaning without a point in time.
The converse is less clear to me. (This item is a lot like #2.) I'm
quite sure I've never set up a sandbox with a single sticky date and
multiple branches, i.e. some files from one branch and others from
another, but all with the same date.
4. There is already the BRANCH:DATE precedent, as with cvs update -j.
Ken
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