Re: svn diff interface

Okay, I have two concrete proposals for rectifying the problem I see
with the current interface. I have no opinion on which one is
adopted, though I would like to see one of them.

The "smart" proposal is just like what we have now, except that the
comparative case allows wcpaths as well as URLs:

  Iterative case: svn diff [-r {N|N:M}] TARGET ...
  Comparative case: svn diff TARGET TARGET

In the comparative case, TARGET can be URL@REV as well as just URL or
WCPATH, of course. To resolve the ambiguous case where two targets
are specified and no -r option is given:

  If both targets are wc paths, assume iterative case.
  Otherwise, assume comparative case.

This lets us "svn diff URL ." to compare our working directory against
a URL (perhaps the vendor branch of the sources you're working on, or
whatever). We can't "svn diff" between two wcpaths, but I think
that's okay.

This might seem a little bit too heuristic, but (a) I don't think
there's any case where it doesn't do what the user expects, and (b)
it's not particularly worse than what we have now, where "svn diff
URL1 URL2" is forced to the comparative case even though it's an
instance of the iterative usage.

The "dumb" proposal is:

  Iterative case: svn diff [-r {N|N:M}] TARGET ...
  Comparative case: svn diff2 TARGET TARGET

This interface allows for "svn diff" between two wcpaths, and isn't
heuristic at all, but does require users to remember which command
does what they want.

Comments?

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Received on Wed May 8 17:56:06 2002