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[TSVN] Re: Merge dialog, second attempt

From: Simon Large <slarge_at_blazepoint.co.uk>
Date: 2005-01-25 15:43:30 CET

Mark Phippard wrote:
>> The danger in doing a poor-man's merge tracking is that people will
>> think it is the real thing. We could implement a scheme that simply
>> saves the last revision I merged, but if someone else does a merge as
>> well, I have no record of that, and could be misled into thinking
>> that TSVN has checked on the server.
>
> I guess the way I see it is that the user still needs to do what you
> are
> doing, this was just an idea to do a better job in initializing the
> values
> when the dialog is first displayed. For someone like myself that
> does all
> of the merging, it would be very helpful.

Yes it would definitely be helpful for some people, but for others doing
that initialisation might imply that TSVN is capable of tracking merges,
which it is not.

> On the N-1 issue, how long are people really going to be confused
> about
> this? I mean, certainly you are not still confused about it. Sure
> the
> first couple times you might be a bit confused, but then hopefully
> most
> people will get it. There is nothing illogical about what Subversion
> is
> doing, it is just a generally confusing operation no matter what you
> do.

It is slightly illogical in that for many operations, specifying a
single revision implies all the changes associated with that revision.
In TSVN I can get a unified-diff for 1 revision in the show-log dialog.
Having said that, if I select 2 consecutive revisions, I get the same
result as if I had selected only the later revision, so maybe I am just
confused by TSVN's own cleverness.

I know users will get it once they stop to think. The only battle I have
is trying to make it more intuitive. I want to merge revs 23 and 24, so
why don't I specify 23-24? It's not confusing when you know why, but it
is still counter-intuitive, so invites mistakes.

> I think we are asking for trouble if the UI is hiding that detail.

That is why my last suggestion does not hide the detail. The new button
allows you to select a range from show-log, but then fills in the
numbers in standard form (N-1) in the merge dialog. But I will also
admit that having yet another button could add to the confusion, so I
won't be too surprised if people think it's a bad idea.

> And if the user had started by reading a book, there is a good
> chance they will not be confused at all.

The SVN book was lacking good examples until Ben updated it a couple of
weeks ago, and the TSVN manual was even more terse, so it is little
wonder users were confused. Hopefully the improved dialog and better doc
will put this issue to bed.

Simon

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Received on Tue Jan 25 15:43:29 2005

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