Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU> writes:
> I'm a bit concerned with client flexibility here.
>
> The occasional build system wants to recognize and omit revision
> control directories from certain operations. It's not a good practice
> (especially because the number of revision control programs grows with
> time), but it happens. emacs is an example. If the revision control
> subdir could be any string, then that becomes more error-prone.
>
> I don't know if that's a compelling argument, though.
Yeah, it's kind of a general question:
Should we offer people flexibility which, if used, might hurt them?
Based on conversations and emails, it seems that some people will
strongly prefer invisible ".SVN" subdirectories, and others strongly
prefer the visible "SVN" (or something similar). I'd hate to tell one
side or the other that there's nothing they can do about it,
especially when it's so easy for us to support whatever the client
specifies.
So my instinct is: pick a default but also offer the flexibility.
90% of people will go with the default; the other 10% should be told
-- via documentation -- about what can happen, but otherwise not
interfered with. Tools such as Emacs will deal with this as they
always have: by picking the same default, and offering the user a way
to change it if necessary.
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:06 2006