[darcs-users] Programmatic invocation

[Tomasz Zielonka]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 12:10:28PM +0100, Tomasz Zielonka wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 02, 2005 at 11:50:09PM +0100, Daniel Lutz wrote:
> > I prefer the stdin/stdout/stderr approach over the "special interface 
> > approach" because
> > - A simple command-line based interface is a good thing for _every_ 
> > external tool (shell, python, perl, awk, ...)
> > - It is much simpler to develop and debug if the user interface and the 
> > programmatic interface are the same
> > - A loose binding between darcs and the external tools simplify things 
> > when working with several program versions and when distributing 
> > programs.
> 
> A well thought out stdin/stdout/stderr interface would allow to do
> many interesting things. For example, it would allow to control a remote
> darcs over an SSH connection. It could be used to optimize the way
> darcs performs operations on ssh connections, replacing the current mix
> of sftp and remote darcs invocations.

I have a crazy idea: let's make a nice machine/hacker-friendly interface
and reimplement the current interactive human-friendly interface on top
of it. This way we will:
- ensure that the machine/hacker-friendly interface is complete.
- reduce the amount of repeated code
- create an example of use of the machine/hacker-friendly interface

What do you think?

Best regards
Tomasz