[Gnu-arch-users] Re: taglines vs explicit (was Linus Torvalds <address@hidden> Re: log-buf-len dynamic)

[Pau Aliagas]

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:

> tla is the thing that track down the changes and permits to send a
> rename aware diff.

Usually arch projects are distributed with the arch information in their 
tar.gz releases. You can of course eliminate all the arch files before 
packaging, but I don't think you should.

> > People recommended you to use tagline instead of exlicit beacause it's a 
> > superset of its functionality: you can do the same (tag manually or stric 
> > commit as you like t call it) and ou can have tags in your files.
> 
> My question is why do I need the tag in the files if tla does everything
> automatically already? You acknowledge I've to tag-move explicitly
> anyways for the strict commit to work.

In no way I acknowledge this, not at all. You can have "strict commit" 
with tagline or explicit, undistinctively, if you state that 
untagged-source = junk.

> > Moreover, imagine that I start feeding you a new driver for the kernel. 
> > Probably I'd stick a tagline inside :) and you'd have to live with it. 
> >
> > Better let both trees be "star-mergeable". And this will happen, peopl 
> > will start tagging their linux trees from the master one.
> > 
> > There's no automatic procedure for moving from one method to the other, so 
> > that if you chose one, You'll have to stick with it (or suffer a massive 
> > delete/add).
> > 
> > Please, think twice about it. If want to have a master arch tree of the 
> > linux kernel, it would much better with taglines, even if most of the 
> > files are explicitly tagged.
> 
> I'm not convinced.

Choosing the tagline tagging method , you have a superset of explicit, so 
you give more freedom to people tagging from the archive. It has no 
implications for you: you use explicit for your files, I use tagline for 
the files I send. I's that easy. I don't like to tla mv :)

> There's no technical reason for why taglines should be better. Even the
> "send the patch to Linus that renames something" isn't optimal with
> taglines, you want to send a "patchset ascii armored" instead with a
> standard protocol to define renames, and even things like directory
> creation or file deletion that patch can't express. As for the problem
> of import from CVS, that's because Larry isn't exporting the rename
> metadata in a standard format.

You mixup things. The generated patchset is no diffferent in any case.
Try mkpatch.

> My point is that there's no technical reason for requiring to merge data
> with metadata, except to avoid running move-tag after moves, but I
> prefer that people is forced to run move-tag, so the probability of
> screwed commits is lower and on the long run it can pay off. The renames
> are frequent but really not *that* frequent (at least in linux) to
> really require an automated parsing during commit. I bet BK also forces
> explicit tagging, and I never heard a single complaint.

I only advocate for a bit more of freedom: create the archive with tagline 
method, add explicitly all the files, but leave the door open to new 
contributions coming in the form of inlined tags. You lose nothing.

Pau