Re: [Monotone-devel] Re: mtn:// sync

[Markus Schiltknecht]

Hi,

Matthew Nicholson wrote:
> I don't like this idea.  One of the things I like about monotone is that 
> it does not force you to think like its developers think when it comes 
> to naming branches.  As a side note, I do like '.' as a branch 
> separator, but not the reverse domain name prefixes (I think some sort 
> of namespace support would be better).

Thanks for your feedback. Maybe we need to be more careful about what 
characters to allow and what not for branch names. We certainly have to 
allow '-' in branch names, yes.

However, for me, branches have always had a hierarchy, and I could tell 
monotone to display that hierarchy by choosing proper branch names. But 
monotone not making use of that hierarchy feels wrong to me. And you 
don't seem to be opposing to a branch hierarchy, just against 
hard-wiring that to reverse domain name prefixes, right? That's fine 
with me.

> I don't think making net.venge.monotone mean 
> {net.venge.monotone,net.venge.monotone.*} is a good idea either.  When I 
> ask for net.venge.monotone that is what I want, not it and all of its 
> children.

Really?

Well, you will get those branches which have been propagated back as 
well, anyway. You'd only save sync'ing 'new' development branches.

> If I want all of its children, I can explicitly ask for those 
> too.  In fact, I have never wanted all of its children.

Guess it's a matter of taste. I mostly want to sync a complete project.

Part of my point was, that you cannot easily sync 'a branch and all of 
its children' correctly, because * matches anything. To be on the save 
side, you currently have to say:

  "net.venge.monotone" "net.venge.monotone.*"

(which would *not* match "net.venge.monotone-foo", which I don't want, 
because that's not a child branch of "net.venge.monotone").

> This would break some existing databases (mine being one) 

Are you also using slashes '/' in your branch names, or only dashes '-'? 
We certainly need to allow dashes, yes. Sorry for that, I just didn't 
think too hard about it.

Slashes in branch names would make dumb support difficult. I'd still 
vote for not allowing slashes in branch names.

Regards

Markus