[darcs-devel] [issue1405] Suggestion: remind user of DARCS_EMAIL

[quick at sparq.org]

Quoting Trent Buck <bugs at darcs.net>:

> Trent Buck <trentbuck at gmail.com> added the comment:
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 05:27:27PM -0000, Kevin Quick wrote:
> > Kevin Quick <quick at sparq.org> added the comment:
> > Quoting Max Battcher <me at worldmaker.net>:
> > > On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 7:50 PM, Trent Buck <bugs at darcs.net> wrote:
> > > > I strongly feel that this prompt should write ~/.darcs/author, *not*
> > > > _darcs/prefs/author. Â I think it is far more likely that two users
> will
> > > > share a repo (in which case _darcs is wrong) than that two users will
> > > > share a $HOME.

> > 
> > I disagree that two users will share a repo: each user should have their
> own 
> > clone of the repo and work there, otherwise they have conflicts editing the
> 
> > same files, running simultaneous builds, and all sorts of other non-
> > deterministic behavior.  Darcs is a distributed SCM after all...
> 
> But someone who has never used Darcs before, and thus has never set
> $DARCS_EMAIL, $EMAIL, _darcs/prefs/author nor ~/.darcs/author, will
> not know that.

But they probably wouldn't have that usage methodology... even with something 
as archaic as CVS.  I'd assert that Everyone uses their own development tree 
and synchronizes against common repositories, regardless of VCS.  Multiple 
people working simultaneously in the same dev directory tree is all sorts of 
pain.

> > The second reason is that the user may want different author ids for
> different 
> > repos.  For example, I use darcs at work and darcs for personal stuff: I
> use a 
> > different author for both of these.
> 
> The proposed change will not prevent this.  It merely means that you,
> the knowledgable darcs user, will need to use that knowledge to do
> 
>     echo $OTHEREMAIL >_darcs/prefs/author
> 
> instead of requiring a *new* user, who doesn't know what they're doing, to
> do
> 
>     echo $EMAIL >~/.darcs/author

But the proposed change would make this "experts-only" functionality, whereas 
the current model seems to DTRT already for all but the tormented folks trying 
to sharing dev directory trees.  While my position is admittedly biased, I feel 
like your proposal would violate the principle of least surprise.

Your point about the new user isn't valid since darcs already handles that by 
asking you what identity to use and storing that for you automatically.

Instead, if we enhance the documentation to describe DARCS_EMAIL, then anyone 
trying to work in your situation would just do the following:

$ cat >> .bashrc
export DARCS_EMAIL me at here
^D
$

-KQ


-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/