Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: [PATCH] my-project-id

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>

    > >> Why not just set a regexp that will be matched against the fully
    > >> qualified version name?

    > > That would be harder to use.

    > It seems to me the user interface would be almost exactly the same,
    > except without having to list the various possible things to match.

    > What case are thinking of where things would be more difficult?

    > In my mind, users would just say things like

    >    tla my-project-id @gnu.org--.*/ ID1
    >    tla my-project-id /emacs-- ID2
    >    tla my-project-id /.*--trunk-- ID3
    >    ...

Perhaps.  I find the mandatory prefix slashes and trailing "--" an
annoyance (although even with the regexp set syntax you need a / if
your regexp set includes an archive regexp).

Also, with your method, I think people will commonly make mistakes
like:

        
        tla my-project-id emacs ID2

which is intended to match only project names with exactly the
category "emacs" but which will in fact match:

        emacs-foo--devo--1.1

and

        tla--emacs--1.4

and

        xemacs--devo--25.0


Also, with regexp sets, it is possible to ask not only "does fully
qualified name X match the pattern" but also "does unqualified package
name CATEGORY--BRANCH match the pattern".



    > > For that matter, I'm tempted to suggest that the last component in a
    > > regexp set (version id) not be a regexp at all --- but be a range
    > > expression of version-ids.   E.g.:

    > Hmmm... that evokes to me a whole new dimension of
    > overengineering ;-) Admittedly, you probably want to use such
    > things for more than just my-id, 

Exactly.  Range expressions for version ids are another thing for
which there is likely to be great utility in many situations.

    > but still: last I looked people seem to be using the version number in
    > fairly simple and limited ways, and it took them several years before they
    > felt enough of a need for project-specific settings, so adding
    > special-purpose code to deal with the combination of complex version 
numbers
    > and fancy per-version-number project settings sounds rather odd.

    > >         tla--.*--{1.1,1.2.1}
    > > which matches 
    > >       tla--devo--1.2
    > > but not
    > >       tla--devo--1.2.1.1
    > > What do you think of that?

    > What's wrong with tla--.*--(1\.1|1\.2\.1)$ ?

It fails to match

        tla--devo--1.1.1

even though that falls between 

        tla--devo--1.1

and 

        tla--devo--1.2.1
    

-t