Better name for dpush wanted

[Mike Mattie]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 09:35:55AM -0600, Brian de Alwis wrote:
> 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
>
>


I am catching up on this thread after being off mail for a bit, but
here is my 2 cents from the peanut gallery.

The primary reason I chose Bazaar over other version control systems
is that I want to make my own work-flows. I am new to Bazaar, but I
have been programming and using version control for a long time. I know
what I want to do. I don't want to abuse some existing workflow trying
to hammer it into something I can call mine.

For me a good interface is based on *layering*. The base layer should
be simple commands that are not overloaded with options or workflow
assumptions.

The top layer would be commands compounded from the base layer with
workflow assumptions.

Having alot of commands is no big deal if the layering allows you
to get your feet wet, and there is room for the user to grow into
(the base layer) when they mature into a expert user.

Grouping of commands is also a good idea IMHO. It is alot easer to
type "ls missing" than ls --missing. Linguistically we are already
trained from birth to compose words. As long as it is kept in
perspective, say two words, three max, and options where appropriate
it is a good thing. Grouping tools within concepts is a powerful way
to convey how to use Bazaar from concept to commands. It also
facilitates discovery.

Also I would add that "ls" is not a good command name. The UNIX
guys will instantly recongize it, but the windows users who haven't
grokked unix shell will find it esoteric. "show" or some such thing
would be more system neutral.

For the people that like the terse commands like dpush there is always
the alias system, and Bazaar could certianly include a default list
of aliases.

My thoughts from the side-lines FWIIW.

-- 
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