[darcs-users] darcs patch: refactor of SelectChanges (and 1 more)

[Florent Becker]

[About a well-needed new presentation for patch selection in presence
of dependencies.]
>
> Then I'm gonna take a hard line and say that (long term) the code ought
> to be rewritten to support an interaction like that mockup.
[...]

> (This is not to detract from the work you've already done; it's an
> improvement over the previous functionality.  But there's still room for
> big improvements to the usability of this workflow.)
>
>>  1/ add a 'last-exit' question, as proposed elsethread, so that
>> --dont-prompt-for-deps does not act that silently. In a
>> second time, add your 'that patch has dependencies, pull them?'
>> question, albeit in "an all or nothing" fashion. We could simply add a
>> warning "this patch has unpulled dependencies", show them when the user
>> hits 'v' (in addition to the patch), and offer him to either pull the
>> patch with all dependencies (with 'y'), or not (with 'w/n'). This is
>> what i see how to implement in the current state of darcs.
>>
>>  2/ Work on making SelectChanges code callable from outside darcs, as a
>> lib, or as specialised darcs commands/flags (ie either
>> Darcs.SelectChanges.getDependenciesForSelection, or darcs pull --dry-run
>> --dont-prompt-for-deps --read-selection FILE) so that we can code a more
>> featureful (maybe graphical) UI outside of darcs. There we could get rid
>> of the sequential prompt/answer paradigm, and have richer interactions.
>
> I agree with the idea of a libdarcs that other apps can talk to.  But I
> still think my mockup workflow deserves to be in Darcs proper, rather
> than relegated to a separate opt-in application.

Of course, my point was that since we'll have to rewrite selectChanges
for this anyway, we'd be better off if we did it right (ie prepared
for libdarcs). This is probably long term, and I want to be sure we
get the API right. When we have that infrastructure, we can get your
mockup workflow within darcs too. Still, I think (1) is a good step
forward and can be made for the january release. (knock on wood)

Florent