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

[Trent Buck]

Trent Buck <trentbuck at gmail.com> added the comment:

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 06:21:46PM -0600, quick at sparq.org wrote:
>>> I disagree that two users will share a repo [...]
>>
>> 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.

Another correspondent has already pointed out that this is not true
for his organization, so that assertion is false.

As for historical usage, RCS certainly "everyone shares a working
tree" as the default usage.

> 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.

A second problem with the current behaviour is that a naïve user will
be asked about their identity for every new repo, instead of just
once.  Furthermore, if they mistype their identity in one repo, they
will end up with an (unnecessary) mismatch between the two.

> 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.

The *only* thing we're discussing is *where* darcs should
automatically store the identity it asks you for.

> 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
> $

As long as users read the documentation.  Stupid new users don't,
therefore the default "I didn't read the documentation" behaviour
should be optimized for them.

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