Re: [RFC] 'basic/additional command set' - adding svn subcommands without destroying our learning curve

Max Bowsher wrote:
> The need to keep our basic command set small, to avoid svn becoming
> daunting to new users, and making the learning curve intolerably
> steep, is not a new issue.
>
> I agree with it, but taken alone, it stops us adding useful utility
> subcommands - the sort of thing I am thinking of:
> svn purge: Remove unversioned files from a WC
> svn sync: 'svn add' all unversioned files, 'svn rm' all missing files
>
> These are minor issues - implementable as scripts easily enough - but
> despite being periodically requested, we've held off implementing them
> for the reason mentioned above.
If we decide to go with this idea, then I suggest we have *one* utility
command. To illustrate, your examples above would become:

    svn util purge
    svn util sync

Yes, this means have to make our command-line parsing slightly smarter,
but that's just for the one command. The nice thing is that you don't
need another --help option; "svn --help" will list all the current
commands, including "util". Then,

    svn help util (or svn --help util, they're equivalent)

will list the util subcommands, and

    svn util help foo (or svn --help util foo, equivalent again)

will describe the utility subcommand.

-- Brane

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Received on Thu Nov 3 03:03:07 2005