Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: renaming branches (was Re: Ideas and questions.)

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 03:50:54AM -0500, graydon hoare wrote:
> oh, never underestimate njs' uncanny ability to crush your finest ideas 
> into a paste :)

graydon, you say the nicest things :-)

I need to go to bed and sleep on this, but some random, not quite
integrated thoughts:
  -- we shouldn't think of this as solving the current "branch names
     should be global" maybe-problem; it mitigates it a bit, by making
     it easier for people to turn poor choices for branch names into
     better choices for branch names, but people can still collide
     their branch names and this is a problem to most of the extent it
     is in the current design.
  -- how much of the "people keep not choosing unique names" problem
     can we solve by attempted branch names against the regexp
     ^.+\..+/.+$, and if they don't match that regexp printing
     "Error: invalid branch name: should be of form 'host.name/branch'"
     ?
  -- if the above actually convinced people to choose good names in
     the first place, would branch renaming still be such a commonly
     requested feature?
  -- actually, why _do_ people want branch renaming?  I've never felt
     the need, personally, so while I can make up some guesses, I
     don't actually know why people keep asking for it over and
     over... anyone?
  -- is the functionality to let everyone have different local branch
     names, that don't necessarily correspond to their buddy's name
     for the same branch, a feature?  is the functionality where we
     can no longer tell without checking some long hexstrings whether
     what I mean when I say "branch foo" is the same as you mean when
     you say "branch foo", really a feature?
  -- how much will these issues be affected if we add in a security
     system that lets project leaders specify on a per-project basis,
     "keys foo, bar, and baz get to commit to branch ___.main; for any
     key X, key X is allowed to commit to any branch under branch
     ___.sandboxen.X; ..." etc.?  (I think of this because of someone
     suggesting that renaming is important because how should they
     know what the right name to use is?, and such a file could
     provide such policy in a structured way.)
  -- OTOH, people do keep asking for the ability to rename branches --
     and adding a layer of indirection solves that problem, if not
     some other ones.  Perhaps it is a good idea for that reason, and
     it doesn't matter that it doesn't necessarily solve some other
     problems.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
"Of course, the entire effort is to put oneself
 Outside the ordinary range
 Of what are called statistics."
  -- Stephan Spender