On Wed, Jun 12, 2002 at 11:26:31AM -0700, Bill Tutt wrote:
> I think the problem is that it's non-obvious what rollback means to the
> user, even if writing both versions of what we think the command should
> do is very trivial coding effort wise. Adding user shortcuts that
> confuse the user isn't helping the user out.
i think we can avoid this problem by being more clear in the 'help'
output for each command and sticking with good command names. yes, i
had a different idea of what rollback should do that apparently
everyone else, but if there had been an 'undo' command, i don't think
i would have tried to use 'rollback' to get that functionality.
plus, lets recall that we have yet to see anyone else who thought this
should work the way i thought it should work. i don't think the
confusion will be too common, especially if both commands exist.
> > i mean come on, we're talking about one file for 'rollback' (which i
> > just rewrote to work like everyone other than me assumed it should,
> > i'll commit it if we decide we want the command), that's about 100
> > lines, much of which is the header.
> >
> > if we also want 'undo', which would do what my original rollback does,
> > that's another 100 lines of client code. it's nothing at all, and
> > makes life easier for the user.
> >
>
> GUIs make life easier for users. Command line programs with large
> numbers of options don't make anybodies life easier. (Users,
> maintainers, support staff, etc...) I mean just check out how many
> subcommands BitKeeper and Perforce have, it's totally insane.
>
> Bill
> P.S. I'm not saying that some sort of rollback subcommand shouldn't be
> committed, but I do think that there shouldn't be a directly accessible
> menu item in a GUI that displays a dialog or something as the interface
> to a possible "svn rollback" command. In all likelihood the GUI would
> have a button on the "svn log" dialog that when pressed did a "svn
> revert; svn merge" based on the selected revision.
i absolutely agree that in a GUI this is not the right interface, but
in the command line, i do know that i keep having trouble remembering
what i have to pass to 'svn merge' to get this functionality, and i
think that's a bad sign.
-garrett
--
garrett rooney Remember, any design flaw you're
rooneg@electricjellyfish.net sufficiently snide about becomes
http://electricjellyfish.net/ a feature. -- Dan Sugalski
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Received on Wed Jun 12 20:33:45 2002