[darcs-users] darcs patch: Hide the inefficient "darcs put" command.

Eric Kow kowey at darcs.net
Fri Dec 5 15:13:28 UTC 2008


On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 15:07:06 +0100, Josef Svenningsson wrote:
> > I suggested hiding it as a compromise.
> > Note that "darcs put --help" will still work.
> >
> Hiding information is a very poor (but sadly rather common) way to try
> to improve user interfaces. If we decide that put is not sufficiently
> important (despite my screaming and kicking) I think it should be
> removed altogether. Having a class of secret, half-hidden commands is
> only going to confuse users in the end.

So far, the way we have been using hidden commands is to assume that
users are not expected to use them at all.  The hidden commands so
far fall into three categories:

 - aliases - things like darcs move => darcs mv
 - stubs - things like darcs commit, which just tell you to use
           an alternative sequence of commands
 - server commands - darcs transfer-mode in particular

I agree with Josef's general sentiment, although my way of phrasing it
might be that if we are going to hide put, we had better make sure
nobody is actually going to use it.  One thing we could do is, if we
were to hide it, is to transform put into a stub, telling people to just
darcs init and darcs push.

Perhaps somebody should submit patches to (a) add better progress
reporting to put, and (b) fix the recent http://bugs.darcs.net/issue1255
discovered by Zooko (in which put does not propagate the repository
format).

-- 
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9
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