Better name for dpush wanted

[Brian de Alwis]

On 29-Apr-2009, at 1:25 PM, Nicholas Allen wrote:
> I don't understand the problem with the number of commands. If you
> reduce them then you add more options to the remaining commands and  
> then
> they aren't as discoverable. I think Bazaar's done a pretty good job  
> of
> coming up with names for commands that represent common concepts. I
> would be against this kind of reduction of commands.


I completely agree with Nick.  People latch onto the number of  
commands as it's something easy to quantify, but I fear they're  
missing the forest for the trees.  Simply counting the number of  
commands doesn't capture anything about the meaningfulness or  
distinctness of the commands.  After all, you don't find many Unix  
hackers favouring sh over csh / vi over emacs / etc. just because of  
the number of builtin commands.

Stephen's suggestion of overloading branch/push/pull with hundreds of  
arguments is exactly what I'd expect from someone who liked git :-)   
More seriously though, reducing the command count at the expense of  
overloading the commands only makes the commands more difficult to  
figure out.  My experiences with git involved repeated episodes of  
intense frustration trying to figure out which of the arguments to  
'git branch' were necessary to delete or create a branch.

I fear the push to reduce the number of commands, intended to help  
lower the learning effort required of novice users, will only hurt  
proficient and expert bzr users.  What really matters to novices is  
being able to create and evolve a meaningful mental model of how bzr's  
commands fit together.  That's where I thought the workflows worked  
very well.  But I suspect in reality, people turn away from bzr  
primarily because of "market sentiment" and the differences between  
its actual and claimed performance.

Anyways, to pull this back to dpush, I think its implicit rebase is  
different enough from normal push that it warrants a separate command.

Brian.

-- 
"Amusement to an observing mind is study." - Benjamin Disraeli