FEATURE REQ: group common commands under 'ls' instead of separate commands

[John Yates]

I expect that this note will wave at a red flag or two for at least
a few of its readers :-)

Let me suggest that this thread really amounts to an argument about the
useful or basis set of queries that we want to support against a database
and the formatting of the results.  The state of the DRCS and a user's
working storage constitute the "database".  Every non-destructive bzr
command is merely a query is disguise.  The many issues around specifying
revisions (which has at times consumed this list) in database terminology
are merely varying query restrictions.

ClearCase's ClearTool definitely exemplified this design perspective.
ClearCase documentation describes both a "query language" and a "report
writing" capability.  In reality these features are nothing more than
subsets of the command-line syntax.  Instead of the SQL's SELECT verb
ClearCase uses DESCRIBE and FIND.  Report writing is a fancy name for
a format string introduce by a -fmt option.  The string can include
tokens to specify rendering various attributes of the entities selected
by the query.

It has been years since I used ClearCase.  Still I remember fondly
composing queries that generated sequences of commands that I could
redirect to a file and execute without any further editing.

I find this model very appealing and wonder what applicability it might
have for bzr.  With an adequately specified abstract data model I can
envision a something like:

   bzr find <entity-type> <restrictions> <presentation>

An aliasing capability would provide a light-weight experimentation
capability similar to command plug-ins.

/john