[darcs-users] [patch192] add --keep-date option to amend-record

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

New submission from Ganesh Sittampalam <ganesh at earth.li>:

This allows you to amend-record a patch without changing the
recorded date. The Ignore-this: salt gets changed in any case,
so the new patch still has a fresh identity.

Probably needs grumpy-old-man review:

> 1.  What problem does the proposed feature solve?

Amending a patch makes it look like it was recently created, which is
often "wrong" especially when the amendment is quite trivial.

> 2.  What are the user stories?

User writes a patch, some time later amends it, perhaps to remove a
conflict, but wants to keep the information about when the patch was
originally recorded as that's more accurate. It can seem especially
weird if it's part of a series and the dates thus end up being not
in a sensible sequence.

This option will also be offered by darcs rebase, where the same issues
arise but perhaps more strongly.

> 3.  Does this change any pre-existing workflows? Does this introduce
> any incompatibilities?

I don't believe so.

> 4.  Does this interfere with the conceptual integrity of Darcs? Is
> the UI really Darcs-ish?

No. Yes. ;-)

> 5.  What are the possible unintended interactions with other
> pre-existing features?

There's a risk that if the salt doesn't get changed, then you end up
with identically named patches which will cause bad things to happen.
I've checked that it does get changed as things stand now, of course,
and I've also added a test case for it.

> 6.  What are the alternative approaches to solving the same problem?
> Why do we prefer this one?

Do something to explicitly set the date (set the system date? Not sure
what else is possible.) This option isn't painful to use, unlike those
mechanisms.

> 7.  Who are the stakeholders? Who is going to benefit/be affected by
> this feature: end-users, repo farms like patch-tag, darcs developers?

End-users. Someone was asking for this on #darcs a few weeks ago
(zooko? twb?)

1 patch for repository http://darcs.net:

Sat Mar 20 23:43:52 CET 2010  Ganesh Sittampalam <ganesh at earth.li>
  * add --keep-date option to amend-record

----------
files: add-__keep_date-option-to-amend_record.dpatch, unnamed
messages: 10340
nosy: darcs-users, ganesh
status: needs-review
title: add --keep-date option to amend-record

__________________________________
Darcs bug tracker <bugs at darcs.net>
<http://bugs.darcs.net/patch192>
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