remove vs rm vs forget (was [MERGE] remove --new)

[Robert Collins]

On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 09:45 +1000, Michael Ellerman wrote:
> On 6/5/06, Martin Pool <mbp at canonical.com> wrote:
> > On 29 May 2006, Aaron Bentley <aaron.bentley at utoronto.ca> wrote:
> > > This patch adds support for "bzr remove --new", as discussed earlier on
> > > the list.  As is frequently the case, the tests are longer than the
> > > tested code.
> >
> > This looks reasonable, but it reminds me of something else:
> >
> > At the moment, 'bzr rm foo' makes foo unversioned, but doesn't remove it
> > from the working directory.  This is a bit weird.
> >
> > So I propose to do this:
> >
> >   bzr rm foo      -- delete it from the working directory and inventory
> >   bzr remove foo  -- just remove from the inventory, leave the file
> 
> -1 from me, this is bound to result in people a) being confused and b)
> losing data.
> 
> I'd suggest:
>  - "bzr rm" is deprecated.
>  - "bzr remove" is an alias for  "bzr unversion" and does the opposite
> of "bzr add".
>  - when users want to remove a file they just "rm" it.
>  - when this happens the file becomes "missing" in bzr terms
>  - you can't commit with "missing" files, you have to either recreate
> the file, or "bzr unversion" it.
>  - there should be an easy way to say "unversion all the currently
> missing files".
> 
> This has the, IMHO desirable, properties that:
>  - bzr never deletes user data.
>  - users can use standard tools to remove files, eg. "rm" or via Nautilus.
>  - but, because removal is a potentially dangerous operation, there's
> still a confirmation step required.
>  - it's harder to accidentally unversion a file.

hg has 'commit -A' which is nice - its 'automatic'.

Our 'bzr remove .' should do the automatic unversioning IMO.

I like CVS's approach of 'rm -f' to unversion and remove a file.

oh, and 'bzr revert' already unversions but does not delete files.

-Rob

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