svn status proposal

I don't feel like this is such a bikeshed discussion anymore; people
seem to be very worried about choosing bad UI defaults... they really
want Subversion to get it Right, based on past annoying experiences
with CVS's UI.

So, I'm trying to detect a consensus. Here's my latest proposal,
which takes into account the last several mails in this thread.

   * a "status line" always looks the same. This rewards habituation
     when visually parsing a line.

     The only change being proposed is to add the square brackets;
     everything else is already there and working:

       XXX ## [ ##] ( ##) path

     The XXX represents local mods: {M,C,A,D,R,_} in the first two
     positions (one for text, one for props.) The 3rd X occasionally
     displays an L to indicate working copy is locked.

     The ## is the working revision.
     The [ ##] is the last revision to have changed (server query).
     The ( ##) is the head revision (server query).

   * use-cases:

      - users usually want to see only interesting lines
      - users only occasionally want to see all lines

      - users usually want to see local mods only (no network traffic)
      - users sometimes want to see local mods AND update info from repository

                            See All Lines?
                           No Yes
 
     See all info? No (1) (2)
   
                    Yes (3) (4)

    * proposal

      svn status : case 1
      svn status -u (--update) : case 3
      svn status -v (--verbose) : case 2
      svn status -v -u : case 4

         The theory here is that case 1 is the most common use-case,
         and that case 4 is the least common use case. Cases 2 and 3
         are middle ground, so they each require a switch.

      In cases 1 and 2, where the network is not accessed, a status
      line would look like:

      M 58 [ -] ( -) foo.c

      In cases 3 and 4, where update info is fetched, a status line
      would have all the numbers filled in:

      M 58 [ 46] ( 60) foo.c

      I know that in case 1, some people would really like to see the
      revision fields go; but I feel strongly about *not* changing
      the way status lines look based on switches.

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Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:41 2006