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Re: [PATCH] --reverse option to invert -c/--change

From: Greg Hudson <ghudson_at_MIT.EDU>
Date: 2006-01-17 22:39:18 CET

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 14:23 +0100, Molle Bestefich wrote:
> The question about how to roll back a revision comes up at least once
> a month (or so) over on the tsvn lists. (Which of course immediately
> results in someone pointing to the 'revert revision' menu option and
> the OP feeling stupid.. hee hee :-)).

Once a month isn't terribly often. But there's a deeper question here
than the frequency of user rollback operations.

The forward -c option is both a convenience for common operations ("show
me what changed in revision N", "merge the change made in revision N")
and also a road towards a more precise command set, where we can talk
about revisions either as changes or as states.

A reverse -c option is simply a convenience for an operation which may
be common ("roll back the change made in revision N"). It allows the
command set to talk about inverse-revisions as changes, but in my
opinion that's just muddying the waters.

The argument has been made that "svn merge -c -N etc." is more intuitive
than "svn merge -r N:N-1 etc.", and will result in fewer user questions
asking how to roll back a change. I have great doubts; I think roughly
the same class of users will need to be taught how to roll back changes
either way.

As I originally said, I'm only -0 on this concept, not -1. I think it's
adding complexity to the command syntax for insufficient gain, but not
so much that I'm going to haul out a veto.

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Received on Wed Jan 18 00:42:31 2006

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