[darcs-devel] [issue1303] proposal: make "darcs changes" interactive by default

[Jim Radford]

On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 12:57:10PM -0500, Max Battcher wrote:
> Zooko wrote:
> > New submission from Zooko <zooko at zooko.com>:

> > I just noticed that nowadays I always add "-i" when I run "darcs  
> > changes".  (In the olden days I always added " | less".)

Interesting.  I use (with the default search set via the $LESS
environment variable)

  darcs changes -v | less '+/^[^ ]+'

so I can use 'n' and 'N' by default, while still being able to search
for arbitrary text in the hunks.

I'm starting to really like the git default of outputing to $PAGER
when the output is a terminal.  It's almost always what.

I can't imagine -i being better than searching in less.

> > It occurs to me that just as "darcs record" is by default interactive  
> > and the user has to specify "--all" if he wants non-interactive batch  
> > mode, so "darcs changes" could by default be interactive and "--all"  
> > could indicate non-interactive batch mode.  I've also noticed that  
> > when I'm instructing newbies in how to use darcs I often have to tell  
> > them to add "-i" so that they can get what they want out of running  
> > "darcs changes".

This is just a sign that we should default to paging the output.
Maybe we could also set LESS='+/^[^ ]+ $LESS' in the environment for
easily skipping to the next chunk by default.

> > This might break scripts which are running "darcs changes" an  
> > expecting batch mode currently, but in the long run it would be  
> > better to have more user friendliness and consistency.  Scripts can  
> > insulate themselves against such a change by explicitly passing "-- 
> > all" for invocations which require batch mode.

> Any major script relying on darcs changes should probably be using 
> --xml-output or --context anyway.

Hardly.  If for some reason you like -i better than less, then you can
check if the output filehandle is a tty, and if so default to -i, but
please don't and use $PAGER instead. :)

-Jim