"revision" considered confusing (was: Outdated Wiki Page?)

[Aaron Bentley]

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John Yates wrote:
> Bzr and the vc world in general already uses the term branch
> as a verb denoting creation of an object of the same name.
> Thus you cannot argue that suggesting that the commit action
> creates a commit object is beyond the pale.

I don't think anyone's arguing that.  But in any case, it is the process
of *revising* a codebase that ultimately leads to a new *revision* of
the codebase.  So we are certainly embracing a term that has a noun and
verb forms that are both meaningful in the context of version control.

> I do not honestly expect bzr to change.  The term revision
> is too deeply embedded in the ui and the vc culture.

We have certainly tried to use terminology that will be familiar to
people from other VCSes.

> In common usage to edit or revise are nearly synonymous.
> Neither term suggests much temporal precision.  Rather they
> suggest extended processes: "I am editing / revising document
> X to reflect / incorporate / achieve / Y".  Further the common
> notion of a revision of a published work really does not
> suggest the idea of an intermediate snapshot or checkpoint.

This argument seems to ignore the noun form of "revision": A revised or
new version, as of a book or other written material.  Every time you
commit, you store a new revision of the code base in the repository.

> If I had my druthers I would prefer to replace commit -- both
> as verb and as noun -- by snapshot.  To me this captures the
> "whole tree state", the "instant in time", and the "perhaps
> not yet finished" notions all at once.

It also doesn't apply to VCSes that don't store snapshots, like Darcs
or, depending on your POV, Gnu Arch.

Aaron
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