[darcs-devel] darcs patch: Add "darcs inventory"

[Florian Weimer]

* Tommy Pettersson:

> On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 10:22:56PM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
>> Thu May  5 22:13:57 CEST 2005  Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de>
>>   * Add "darcs inventory"
>
> I have some thoughts on this
>
> The name (yes, I'm sorry, I know we always discuss names
> endlessly) inventory is used internally in darcs for the
> collection of _patches_, not files and directories.  Can there
> be a problem if the command named inventory doesn't have
> anything (directly) to do with the "inventory"?

Yes, it occurred to me that this might be a problem, but only after
sending the patch.

> This is a function that should probably be a subcommand of
> the still not implemented query command.  With this I mean,
> if anyone has an implementation of the query command soon, this
> patch should be rewritten to avoid first introducing a new top
> level command and then removing it again to the query command.

I could change its name to "query-list" (or "query-recorded", better
suggestions welcome) and state explicitly that it will be removed in a
future version, in favor of a "query list" command.

> Then I also am a bit curious for when and why people want
> this command.  I know it has been requested.

Once per month, I believe. 8-)

> But what is a listing of the added files plus nonrecorded added
> files good for?

I use this feature extensively in makefiles, to obtain a list of files
which should be built.  Explicit file lists in makefiles are a
constant source of merge conflicts, in my experience.  Just using
what's in the working copy doesn't detect missing adds at build time,
and risks broken records (been there, done that, although with other
systems).