[rfc] developer documentation on user interaction

[Ben Finney]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:

> Vincent Ladeuil writes:
>  >     Stephen> 2.  The audience for the CLI demands stability;
>  > 
>  > As in: "I don't want to test which version I'm using so don't
>  > change anything there or I'm doomed" ?
>
> The audience I'm talking about here is Russel, Ben, and Maritza, not
> Alex.  And yes, I think they'd agree that they don't want to have to
> do "bzr --version" on an unfamiliar host in order to know what to tell
> the new dev they're mentoring how to use bzr's CLI.  Don't you agree?

If I'm the “Ben” in question, then yes, that's a fair statement of my
position.

A stable CLI means that *existing* commands, in existing scripts, should
continue to work as those scripts expect, even when the Bazaar being
used is a newer version than those scripts were written for.

That doesn't mean “nothing changes”; it also doesn't mean “no new
features”. It *does* mean that changes in anything but major releases
(e.g. 1.x → 2.x) should not break usage of any existing command-line
scripts.

-- 
 \                “Please to bathe inside the tub.” —hotel room, Japan |
  `\                                                                   |
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Ben Finney