Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: comments on net.venge.monotone.workspace-merge.migration

[Johan Bolmsjö]

On Tuesday 22 August 2006 09:10, Marcel van der Boom wrote:
> On 22 aug 2006, at 03:57, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> > I'm leery too, just trying to balance that against inertia and
> > practicality -- the problem is that people (myself included!) have
> > come to depend on _MTN/revision as the only convenient way to get at
> > that information...
> >
> >> Note for instance that we have automate get_base_revision, so keeping
> >> around _MTN/revision in the old format so that people can cat it
> >> seems
> >> silly, and people who are _writing_ to _MTN/revision should know that
> >> they are voiding their lack of warranty (as you put it IIRC) and may
> >> have to change scripts.  It's not like there's no warning when things
> >> stop working.
> >
> > Sure.  And, hey -- automate get_base_revision_id -- that's a cool
> > command, thanks for pointing it out :-).  That definitely removes much
> > of my objection (maybe Marcel has an opinion too).
>
> My (our) usecases are twofold:
>
> <snip>
> I'm not married to writing to _MTN/revision but what i would like to
> be able to do is to set an arbitrary revid as the base revision to
> get information about what the workspace at the install is like in
> relation to that revision. Putting that revid in the revision file
> and using mtn status / mtn diff --external is the usual start sequence.
>

I write to _MTN/revision for this reason too. I overlap monotone over a 
clearcase snapshot view because monotone is more flexible for playing around
with things. If I'm satisfied with the changes I will create a clearcase 
branch, change the clearcase CS with this branch, check out the files in 
clearcase and do an "mtn update", check in the files in clearcase. Then 
someone can review the changes I've made and I merge the branch to our main 
dev branch.

Now, the thing is that when I change the clearcase CS, I want to be able to 
tell monotone that you should look at these files in relation to a certain 
revision and some times branch (I already have in the DB). I do echo "xxx" > 
_MTN/revision. If I want to change the branch "vi _MTN/options"

It's actually usefull in another way too, I can save snapshots (don't have to 
set clearcase labels). And later see what folks have been doing for example 
when I was away on vacation:-)

/Johan