[darcs-users] How do you rename a patch with amend-record?

[Trent W. Buck]

Ben Franksen <benjamin.franksen at bessy.de> writes:

> Ashley Moran wrote:
>> On 4 Apr 2009, at 16:23, Guillaume Hoffmann wrote:
>>> When you edit the long comment with darcs amend-record
>>> --edit-long-comment , the first line is in fact the name (or short
>>> description) of the patch.
>> 
>> Thanks!  I tested this and it works.
>> 
>> I find this really non-intuitive though.  I'd really like a way to do
>> inline patch renaming via --edit-description, like the way you first
>> enter a patch name.
>
> I agree. I found this quite unintuitive, even a hassle, when I learned
> darcs. Sometimes you don't have a $DISPLAY in Unix. Then some
> obscure 'default' editor comes up (this depends on system configuration and
> is not always appropriate to change, for instance when using shared
> accounts) which I don't even know how to exit from.

Arguably learning how to exit without saving from vi and nano should be
one of your first UNIX lessons :-)

To customize the editor temporarily on a shared account (such as root),
you can set VISUAL and/or EDITOR to the name of your preferred editor,
e.g.

    export EDITOR=ed
    darcs record

Or one-shot

    EDITOR=ed darcs record

Because it's not appropriate to make this permanent in .profile on a
shared account, what we typically do at my workplace is each have our
own $ENV script in /root, e.g.

    /root/.shrc.twb
    /root/.bashrc.alla
    /root/.bashrc.russm

Then when you first log in, you just do

    . ~/.shrc.twb

to get your preferred environment.

> Would a patch be accepted that adds another switch to amend-record
> (e.g. --edit-name)? The idea is that this starts only the line editor, and
> presents the old patch name to be edited.

There is already -m for that purpose, though it requires
copy-and-pasting,  I think the current choices of -m and --edit are
adequate for amend-record, but I'm prepared to listen to arguments for a
third intermediary option.

I definitely DO think it's confusing the way all editor sessions
currently have the patch name and the patch description, with no blank
line separating them or other visual clues.  I think this is EXTREMELY
confusing for anyone who isn't already coming from a VCS that does that
(e.g. CVS?)

Even for me, it causes problems because I don't think I should add a
blank line between patch name and description, but if I don't, it causes
wrapping problems for my editor (which thinks it's all a single
paragraph).

Perhaps a better style would be that of an email message, e.g.

    Author: <patch author>
    Date: <date>
    Summary: <patch name>

    <patch description>

This would also provide an alternative way to spoof author and date.
Currently the latter can only be spoofed with --pipe, which is a massive
pain in the arse for interactive use, as input validation isn't done
until the end.