I've only been using Monotone for a few weeks, and then only to evaluate it, but already I've experienced +dozens+ of instances of reading a revision ID out ... to myself. I +never+ copy and paste. For example, I often make notes about the revision history, and that involves writing down at least part of the ID; I have to say the thing over to myself just so I can write it down right.
I appreciate that many people copy and paste - all that means is that we should use underscores to seperate the digit groups. On 12/09/05, Steven Grimm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 12/09/05, Jon Bright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I also agree with this. For me, > > > > 568b-2462-456e-9a57-4326-93df-936d-4835 > > > > would be much more readable than > > > > 568b2462456e9a57432693df936d4835 > > To me, they're both meaningless gobbeldygook that I can't say out loud > to someone when I want to tell them which recent checkin has a fix for > their bug. I think the only differences between the two are that the > first one takes less screen real estate and I can select the first one > by double-clicking, which I can't reliably do with the hyphens there. > > I guess it depends on what you want to do with revision IDs. It's not > like you're ever actually *reading* one per se; it has no intrinsic > meaning. There are only a few reasons I ever care about a revision ID in > any version control system: > > 1. To supply it to a version-control system command or another app > (bug-tracking system, etc.) I doubt many people will ever type a hex ID > in by hand, so hyphens don't matter here; you'll be cutting and pasting. > And that's easier without the hyphens because they can act as word breaks. > > 2. To refer to it verbally. Which is impractical with SHA1 IDs no matter > how you render it; if I want to refer to a revision in speech I have to > tag it. > > 3. To compare it against another one. Only in one case out of four > billion is it insufficient to compare, say, the first and last four > digits of an SHA1 hash, which is easy enough to do without the hyphens. > The chances of making a mistake in a visual comparison are orders of > magnitude higher than the chances that any 8 digits will actually be the > same between two hashes. > > My vote (as a mere user of monotone, not yet a contributor) is to keep > them as they are. > > Is there any significant performance penalty to having zillions of tags > in the system? I think most people's objections to the hashcodes would > be be satisfied with a hook script that auto-tags revisions with a much > shorter, likely-but-not-guaranteed unique, value at commit time > (username + timestamp, DB name + autoincremented serial number, etc.) I > know if I had that, I'd probably never refer to a hex revision ID. What > happens when there's a name collision between tags during a synchronize, > anyway? > > -Steve > > > _______________________________________________ > Monotone-devel mailing list > Monotone-devel@nongnu.org > http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/monotone-devel > _______________________________________________ Monotone-devel mailing list Monotone-devel@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/monotone-devel
