Backwards compatibility (was Re: how can you tell you have merged?)

Matt Mackall mpm at selenic.com
Thu Sep 11 19:24:19 UTC 2008


On Thu, 2008-09-11 at 20:38 +0200, Adrian Buehlmann wrote:
> On 11.09.2008 08:13, Patrick Waugh wrote:
> > After finally getting up and running on ubuntu, I'm now back to
> > reviewing the hg manual, and on my second read have a question.
> > 
> > Let's say you do this:
> > 
> > hg clone hello my-new-hello
> > cd my-new-hello
> > sed -i '/printf/i\\tprintf("once more, hello.\\n");' hello.c
> > hg commit -m 'A new hello for a new day.'
> > hg pull ../my-hello
> > hg merge
> > 
> > Now, how can you tell that you have done a merge?
> > 
> > hg heads give us:
> > 
> > patrick at psychotic:~/repos/my-new-hello$ hg heads
> > 6[tip]:4   90f041906e70   2008-09-10 23:26 -0500   patrick
> >   Added extra line of output
> > 
> > 5   53781dd78cf6   2008-09-11 00:38 -0500   patrick
> >   A new hello for a new day.
> > 
> > So, since I'm still seeing two heads, how would I know (if I left,
> > came back and had forgot I had done a merg) that the merge was
> > complete but that I still needed a commit?
> > 
> 
> Maybe, it would be helpful if hg status would print a special
> notice at the end _if_ the working directory has *two* parent
> revisions.

I would really appreciate it if people who are not new here would
refrain from suggesting changes that break backwards compatibility.
We can't change the default output of status, it will kill dozens of
innocent programs including people's build systems and IDEs. Such
changes are categorically off-limits and I'm growing quite weary of
pointing that out (it feels like it's a daily occurrence).

If you're going to suggest any sort of behavior change, you have to
first consider the impact on:

- people who've been using hg for the past 3 years
- all the tools they've built (most of which are not public)
- all the automated systems they've built

These people are our primary customers, /not/ impatient new users.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.




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