[Monotone-devel] Re: [RFC] change 'mtn annotate <file>' behaviour

[Bruce Stephens]

Koen Kooi <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

> powerbook-wlan:~/Projects/docs koen$ mtn annotate packaged-staging.xml
> <snip>
> 5bdd8a0380f4636873f40403b6935b86b21cc22d: <chapter>
> 5bdd8a0380f4636873f40403b6935b86b21cc22d:       <title>Conclusions</title>
> 5bdd8a0380f4636873f40403b6935b86b21cc22d: <section>

[...]

> That's not very informative nor usefull without extra sed+awk+mtn voodo, but 
> I was bored
> so I tried the --brief option to see what that does:
>
> powerbook-wlan:~/Projects/docs koen$ mtn annotate packaged-staging.xml --brief
> <snip>
> 5bdd8a03.. by koen 2006-08-13: <chapter>
>                              :  <title>Conclusions</title>
>                              : <section>
>                              :  <title>Current state</title>
>                              : <para>
> be4c1459.. by koen 2006-08-13: </para>
>                              : </section>

[...]

> Wow, that actually looks like the output I'd expect from an annotate tool!
>
> My proposition: make '--brief' default and make the current
> behaviour available under '--only-revs'. Comments?

Of course, yes, the second form ought to be the interactive default.
(IIRC, the revid form came first, which is why it's the default.)

In general it wouldn't be at all surprising if one could improve
almost every aspect of the interface in some way.  It's (as always) an
issue of taking the time to look at it, and (as each thing is changed)
getting used to the change, and making sure all tools that use the old
format get changed.

I guess that's more of an argument for an automate version of
annotate, so that tools can have a versioned interface to rely on.
Then one can more easily change the non-automate interface to be
useful.