[Monotone-devel] branch aliases

[Nathaniel Smith]

In a sneaky attempt to split off part of that big thread about
database renaming... here's a proposal for local branch aliases.  The
intent is that these are entirely for UI purposes -- they exist only
locally, they do not replace branch true names (whether those turn out
to be strings or UUIDs or whatever), they are not transferred on
netsync.  They fill roughly the same niche as shell aliases, say.

Here's how they work:
  -- firstly, assume we switch to a "host/branch/subbranch" style of
     branch naming; I think one of the things that actually did come
     out of the Huge Thread Of Doom was some rough consensus that this
     would actually be a good idea anyway.
  -- we add a table of aliases to each database, basically just some
     string->string mappings, like "mtn" -> "venge.net/monotone".
     -- it'd probably be handy to have some general way to stick
        attributes on a database anyway (like codeville does), to
        to store things like default netsync servers and maybe trust
        seeds, if such are ever implemented; this table perhaps should
        tie into that.
  -- when we see a branch name on the command line, we snarf up
     everything before the first "/", and if it's in our table of
     aliases, replace it with our alias value.
So, "mtn" would become "venge.net/monotone", and "mtn/changesets"
would become "venge.net/monotone/changesets".

Actually, I guess this works fine with "." branches too, just we snarf
until the first ".".

Simple, effective, good?

-- Nathaniel

-- 
"...these, like all words, have single, decontextualized meanings: everyone
knows what each of these words means, everyone knows what constitutes an
instance of each of their referents.  Language is fixed.  Meaning is
certain.  Santa Claus comes down the chimney at midnight on December 24."
  -- The Language War, Robin Lakoff