Re: Atomicity of locks and needs-lock

On 4/29/06, Molle Bestefich <molle.bestefich@gmail.com> wrote:
> Edward Harvey wrote:
> > [snip long story]
>
> You have a good point.
> It's not obvious to users that they cannot lock files if it does not
> have "needs-lock" set.

That's because they *can* lock files even if it doesn't have needs-lock.

> There's still a "lock" command, and in a GUI it's ever-so-present,
> even on non-needs-lock files.

Which - given the above - is totally correct.

> But applying needs-lock automatically is not the solution.
>
> The solution is to warn users "needs-lock is not set on this file,
> what you're doing is useless. Go read the manual..." if they try to
> lock it.

See mails from Greg Hudson, C Mike and Ben Collins-Sussman why it is
*not* useless to lock a non-needslock-file.

> And removing the lock menu item from the GUI on all files that do not
> have needs-lock is another good preventive measure, although it cannot
> be applied entirely (users might select multiple files, etc etc.).

This would be absolutely wrong behaviour: that way you're imposing
your view of the world onto your users, even though the software would
actually support other use-cases.

bye,

Erik.
Received on Sat Apr 29 15:48:32 2006