marrying bundle and directive? (Re: [MERGE] Merge directive format 2, Bundle format 4)

[Adeodato Simó]

* Aaron Bentley [Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:24:42 -0400]:

> John Arbash Meinel wrote:
> > So in general, it seems like 'bzr merge-directive' is going to be more
> > to type than 'bzr bundle'. (Both because it is longer, and because it
> > generally needs a source url).

> I think the command name's a bit too long also.  Any suggestions?

Hm, this is probably coming late to the party, and I hope nobody gets
offended (feel free to ignore me instead :-P). But since I sense this
one of those "speak now or shut up forever" moments, I'll speak up.

I *personally* think that, from an UI point of view (and UI is
important), there should be a single command, despite both being
separate things inside bzrlib.

My reasoning is that for the user, there is (or would be, and IMHO
should preferrably be) only one concept: "the file/format to send my
changes to the author of a branch, which is equivalent to publishing my
branch, and which most of the time include a diff representation of its
contents".

So, in my opinion, there would be a single command, preferably `bundle`,
that would take care of all the possible use cases, always producing
merge directives (almost always, anyway):

  1. `bzr bundle ../upstream.branch >../submit.diff`

    Keeps quite the same semantics and format as now (=> users won't be
    surprised), and it's the canonical thing to do to send patches
    upstream.

  2. `bzr bundle --no-diff`

    A merge directive without the preview.

  3. `bzr bundle --no-bundle` # heh

    A merge directive without the bundle (needs URL).

  4. `bzr bundle --raw`

    For those wanting to play with the raw bundle contents.

Okay, that should do for presenting the idea. I realize it could be
argued better, but I'm in a hurry and wanted to send it before leaving.

As said, feel free to ignore, but I really think it'd be for the best
(who would run `bzr bundle` as opposed to `merge-directive`?), and I
wanted to toss it in to see what others thought.

Cheers,

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
Man: Wow, that woman looks exactly the way Nina is going to look in
about ten years... Oh shit, it is Nina. Don't tell her what I said, okay?
                -- http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/003086.html