Subject: Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Re: File naming conventions
From: Zenaan Harkness <zen@cashpoolcomps.com>
To: arch <gnu-arch-users@gnu.org>
In-Reply-To: <20041019000526.GB11283@puritan.pcp.ath.cx>
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> > So I'll break it into two:
> 
> > 1)  I can do things with find I can't do with inventory.  I don't
> > understand how to use inventory, for that matter, and I shouldn't have
> > to just because I'm using this particular system.
> 
> This is, of course, a joke, no?  How can you dismiss something that you
> don't know how to use as useless and stupid?

You answered a superfluous part.

What should have been given though was an example, so here it is,
something that can be done with find, but not tla inventory: follow
symlinks. Sure there are more workarounds. And yes "show me the patch"
or who is willing to implement this. But hey, it's a valid point, and
particularly noticeable in my setup. So I revert to manual globbing/
finding in my build scripts and therefore have two sets of regexes in
the project rather than one, that do essentially the same thing.

> > It's ridiculous to require people to change the way they development
> > at that level just because {arch} matches * and contains a bunch of
> > stuff that return stuff against my greps/tags/misc tools.
>
> That is your opinion and I'm sure others will agree.  However, tla has
> been designed this way and it's kind of late to complain about stupid
> commands and directories.  Get over it.

Bitkeeper is the same or worse. Except while using Bitkeeper (for the
two weeks I did) I got used to having "bk sfiles" (ala tla inventory)
work as expected - like an exportation of the internal regexes. This
unfortunately (I say) is not the case with tla.

> > 2) Claiming a directory is off limits and the user shouldn't worry
> > about it, and then naming it DO_NOT_ENTER is just silly.  There's a
> > mechanism that exists in UNIX already for communicating to a user and
> > his tools that a directory should be ignored.
> 
> It is not named DO_NOT_ENTER and it never will be, albeit that's not
> your point.  Anyway, it is named {arch} which certainly hints that this
> directory is under tla control.  You may argue, with some success, that
> it should be called .{arch} if users shouldn't be entering it, but it is
> really only a matter of taste, not functionality.

It's a historical artifact, in fact still required due to user-level
files still being stored there. Once they exit, there's no design
reason, and significant unix convention established to weigh heavily in
favour of a dot file (dot dir to be precise).

>   It's like GNOME that
> creates Desktop and Downloads and Public directories in $HOME.  Now
> that's bad taste.

:)

While agreeing that Desktop is bad taste I extrapolate that {arch} is
quite similar in the context of its (very) new usage pattern.


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