[RFC] Automatic Plugin Suggestion

[Robert Collins]

On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 10:21 +0000, Martin Pool wrote:
> On 29/02/2008, Martin Albisetti <argentina at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 5:00 AM, Martin Pool <mbp at sourcefrog.net> wrote:
> >  > I talked to Robert a bit about this, and we have a mutually agreeable position.
> >  >
> >  >  That is that, to start with, we'll change the errors for unknown
> >  >  commands, formats, protocols, etc to suggest that people _might_ find
> >  >  a plugin on bazaar-vcs.org/Plugins that would support it.  We can keep
> >  >  that page up to date, warn that they may have limitations, or
> >  >  whatever.
> >
> > So this wouldn't require a database at all?
> > Any unknown command will suggest the user to see if it exists in
> > bazaar-vcs.org/Plugins?
> 
> Yeah, and re-reading it it doesn't seem like it would be all that useful.

I think it solves the huge primary bug of 'bzr bisect' -> 'Bazaar is
missing bisect', by turning it into 'you should look as we may well have
bisect'. 

> I'm still of the opinion that the best thing is as a baseline to have
> a static database included with bzr that tells you what commands are
> in what plugin, and allow for extension providers for either the
> directory or the installation method.

I really don't like this because it smells wrong. If we want to more
batteries included, include them! Externally available tools is a
dynamic list, and shipping a static list that makes suggestions won't
perform QA, ensure things integrate well etc etc etc.

-Rob
-- 
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.
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