[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Obsoleting abrowse

[Matthieu Moy]

David Allouche <address@hidden> writes:

> address@hidden:devel/bazaar-tests $ baz rbrowse --versions address@hidden/
> [...]
> address@hidden/pyarch--abentley--0.5.0
> [...]
>
> You probably want to fix "rbrowse archive/" to behave correctly before
> removing abrowse.

Hmm, actually, it behaves correctly in the sense that it meets its
specifications: in "rbrowse archive/", "archive" is a regexp, and
"address@hidden" will match the regexp
"address@hidden". You wanted to do baz rbrowse --versions
'address@hidden/'.

So, we can't "fix" it, but we can change its specifications (and then
the implementation) to make it more user-friendly.

I was thinking of a --enable-regexp option (can anyone find a better
name?), and disable this regexp-searching by default. Actually, this
could apply to any command accepting a list of revisions as argument,
like (in the latest 1.5):

  baz missing --enable-regexp 'address@hidden/bazaar.*'

Another (more or less orthogonal) possibility is to make the leading ^
and the trailing $ implicit:

  baz rbrowse address@hidden/ => only "address@hidden"
  baz rbrowse 'address@hidden/' => explicitely allow an
                                          arbitrary suffix.

I'll implement this second option.

> Also, why not just rename "rbrowse" to "browse"? This vestigial r prefix
> does not make a lot of sense when abrowse is gone.

True. Should be fine if we keep rbrowse as a deprecated alias for long
enough.

> The plan, about 6 months back (if memory serves), was to deprecate those
> commands in favor of a glob-based "branches" command, at some point
> after nuking the c-b-v hierarchy. I do not know what happened to the
> idea, but maybe you should sync about it with Robert.

I had some related thoughts here:

  http://wiki.gnuarch.org/FrontEndFriendly

Actually, this "branches" command you're talking about is more or less
what "rbrowse" has become now.

-- 
Matthieu