[Monotone-devel] Re: Newbie questions

[Bruno Hertz]

Robert Leftwich <address@hidden> writes:

> I have just started using Monotone and I have a question or two. Firstly, it 
> is 
> not as easy as I would hope to detect when new files are created and are not 
> yet 
> under version control, i.e. monotone status does not list them, I need to use 
> list unknown - requiring at least two operations to get the full picture. A 
> VCS 
> that does not list new or deleted files in its main status command seems 
> somewhat counter intuitive to me or is this a fundamental mind shift I need 
> to make?

I for one don't understand where the fundamental mind shift would be,
maybe you want to explain from where you're coming. But being myself
new to monotone either, I wouldn't expect the status command do
anything else than report on the files which are under revision
control. Especially when commands for extra info are available and
customized summaries can be scripted.

As to deleted files, afaik files under revision control which are
deleted are reported by the status command. So if you're implying you
want monotone to automatically keep track of any file added or deleted
in the working copy directory tree, I think you're heavily extending
the responsibilities most people would like to impose on an scm
system.

>
> Secondly, maybe I'm abusing Monotone a little, but in one project I have a 
> very 
> large number of generated graphs that I don't need to include under version 
> control, so I've added that directory name regex to the ignore_file() 
> function 
> in .monotonerc. While this works as expected, in normal operation it slows 
> things down dramatically, especially when checking for newly created files, 
> but 
> it impacts almost every operation. Is there an alternative set-up or some 
> command switch or function I can use to get Monotone to truly ignore the 
> graph 
> directories rather than traversing them each time? Note that I've tried 
> symbolic 
> links but Monotone appears to follow those as well.

Didn't test that myself, but from what you describe it seems that
monotone traverses the entire tree in any case and hence only runs
full file paths through the ignore hook. If so, I'd agree that could
and should be done better.

The problem would be though, with this rule based, hooked ignore
mechanism, how to detect resp. communicate exact matches on
directories. That's presumably a design flaw, and the rule based
approach maybe should be complemented by a .cvsignore file analogue in
MT or something.

Regards, Bruno.