[darcs-users] better mgmt of 'pending'

[Stefan Rank]

on 07.12.2004 17:34 Mark Stosberg said the following:
> On 2004-12-07, Stefan Rank <e9725431 at student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> 
>>I think it would be less suprising if darcs - in the case that started 
>>this thread (add followed by remove) - checked pending when 'remove' is 
>>called and, if there is already an add for this file, it just deletes 
>>the add.
> 
> I agree here. 
> 
>>A more basic (and safer) approach would be an extra command that 
>>presents you with the list of (explicit) pending changes and lets you 
>>delete them separately (like 'darcs undo-pending' or 'darcs revert 
>>--partial --dontdelete'). this should also work for changing your mind 
>>about a 'replace patch'.
> 
> What would this interface look like? Considering darcs is made to be
> used by programmers, editting the pending file is not a particularly 
> scary or difficult thing to do, especially since you can make a backup
> of it. So if you get a "conflicts in pending" message after you edit it,
> you know you need to try again. :)
> 

not scary, but less than obvious. at first i thought about just
presenting the list of things in _darcs/patches/pending as a numbered
list (select the one you want to undo), but now i think that all i
wanted would be possible with a simple change in the questions darcs
asks on 'darcs revert':

for a remove darcs asks

rmfile ./a.txt
Shall I revert this patch? (2/2) [ynWsfqadjk], or ? for help:
Do you really want to do this? yes
This operation will not be unrevertable! Proceed? y
Finished reverting.

for an add

addfile ./a.txt
Shall I revert this patch? (1/1) [ynWsfqadjk], or ? for help:
Do you really want to do this? y
Finished reverting.

(why is there no not-unrevertable-question here? as the file is deleted
during revert darcs should not be able to unrevert? are the patches
cached in _darcs?)

i think it would suffice to add a second question for every add and move:
"Do you want to delete the file from the filesystem too?"

stefan