[darcs-users] Re: renaming the rerecord command

[Mark Stosberg]

On 2004-10-19, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch at pps.jussieu.fr> wrote:
>
> David, while we're on that subject: could I please ask you to
> implement something that allows us to mark given commands and options
> as expert, so that you nead
>
>   darcs expert-help
>   darcs optimize --expert-help
>
> in order to see that they exist?

I think this is unnecessary. The darcs help is already more concise than
both CVS and arch: Since I have all three installed on one machine, Here
are the line counts for each:

	cvs help 2>&1 | wc -l
		  35
	tla help 2>&1 | wc -l
		 185
	darcs -h 2>&1 | wc -l
		  34

(I know that tla/arch has been working on slimming down this help
screen)

Keeping the commands hidden may prevent someone from discovering a useful
command. This reminds me of the windows feature (that I never liked) that
would hide menu options you haven't used recently. 

I agree that it could be useful to distinguish between command and
advanced commands in the documentation.

I think simply offsetting them a little would do the trick. Here's an
example layout, using a random set of commands as "advanced": 

  Common Commands:
    initialize    Initialize a new source tree as a darcs repository.
    get           Get a repository.
    add           Add a one or more new files or directories.
    remove        Remove one or more files or directories from the repository.
    mv            Move a file or directory to a different location or name.
    whatsnew      Display unrecorded changes in the working directory.
    record        Record changes as a named patch.
  
  Advanced Commands:
    unrecord      Unrecord a named patch.
    rerecord      Add some changes to an already recorded patch.
    revert        Revert to recorded version.
    unrevert      Undo the last revert operation.
    pull          Pull patches from another repo.
    unpull        Unpull a named patch.

#####

The manual already does something like this by having a "rarely used
commands" section. 


	Mark