Re: svn version subcommand

Greg Hudson wrote:
> In r10430, brane committed a change to implement "svn version" as a
> subcommand.
>
> As far as I know, this idea came up in some smoky back room and was
> implemented without much discussion. I am close to -1 on it because:

I am +1 on this, if and only if, before 1.2.0, "svn version URL" also shows
the server version.

CVS has this feature and it is sometimes helpful.

> * I think we need to keep our subcommand count small. If a user
> wants to figure out how to do something, the list of subcommands
> is one of the primary places to look. The longer this list, the
> longer it will take users to find what they want.

Although I agree that our subcommand set size must remain managable, I think
this addition is worthwhile.

> * Subcommands are typically seen as verbs, not as nouns. So people
> might get derailed thinking that there is an svn subcommand to
> "version" a file or directory.

Typically, but not exclusively (e.g. "help" not "show-help", "resolved", not
"i-have-resolved").

To "version" (verb) an object doesn't have any meaning to me.
However "version" (noun) seems quite clear - the only real thing you can do
with a program's version number is to show it - just like that's the only
thing you can do with a program's help.

Max.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@subversion.tigris.org
Received on Wed Jul 28 01:20:05 2004