thoughts on repository/storage/branch/checkout

[Denys Duchier]

Aaron Bentley <aaron.bentley at utoronto.ca> writes:

>> That seems to contradict the understanding that I thought I had gotten from
>> lifeless on IRC.  If you specify the store location explicitly then you can't
>> easily move a repo,
>
> That is okay, we expect that to be a rare circumstance.

With inheritance, it would just work.  Also there is the problem that the same
repo may be mounted in different places on different machines, in which case an
absolute URL would not work.

> Inheritance, to me, suggests that a branch would use the first enclosing
> repository, whatever that might be.

yes.  I just checked the IRC log and _you_ said to me:

<abentley> Yes, as I said, the branch uses the containing repository for storage.

I think that's actually what got me started thinking of inheritance.

>  Relative URLs don't have that property.

granted

>> I am not adding a concept, I am merely making it possible to freely and
>> uniformely combine 4 primitive concepts, each one very circumscribed and thus
>> hopefully easy to grasp.
>
> As I mentioned earlier, the division is a matter of taste.  Your
> concepts of STORE, BRANCH, and probably CHECKOUT are also divisible.

It would be nice to judge my proposal on its own merit rather than dismiss it
because other divisions are possible.  I presented 4 primitive concepts and
regular ways to combine them.  I am not claiming that these are the only
possible choice of primitive concepts, nor am I claiming that all points in this
little algebra are equally useful.  I _am_ however claiming that regularity of
composition facilitates understanding; there are no special cases, no arbitrary
limitations.  Also my primitive concepts do no not suffer from multiple
personalities disorder (the way the word "branch" currently does).

Cheers,

--Denys