[TSVN] Re: Another idea for the Merge pot

Dave Peterson wrote:
> Simon Large <slarge <at> blazepoint.co.uk> writes:
>
>> I have to disagree with that.
>> Diffing 2 trees is not something that is easy to do in TSVN, in fact
>> I don't think it is even possible. So it is not a good concept to
>> base the merge dialog on because it is unfamiliar to non CLI users.
>
> I don't see how the fact that diffing two tress is not an explicitly
> easy direct operation in TSVN should effect the terminology for the
> Merge dialog / operation.

Only because we are then describing Merge in terms of another operation
which may just as unfamiliar, so it doesn't make merging any clearer.
Diffing trees is (to me anyway) not an immediately intuitive concept. I
already have in my head that a 'revision' is effectively a changeset, so
intuitively when I want to merge the changes I made in rev N from branch
to trunk, I have in my mind that those changes are completely described
by 1 number, N. But for a merge I need to revise that view to look at it
as a diff between rev N-1 and rev N. OK, it's not hard, but because it
is a different approach from everything else exposed by TSVN, which is
why people are finding it confusing.

> Am I wrong in the fact that the merge operation now uses terminology
> unique to itself, or are there other TSVN operations that use both
> the 'To' and 'From' terminology and where it means the exact same
> thing? If other operations *do* use the same terminology, but it
> means something different, than that's even more argument for
> changing the current merge terminology to something unique so as to
> avoid confusion.

I think the terminology is already unique. It's more a user problem
because I mentally map "from" to "source" and "to" to "dest", which is
incorrect.

> Shouldn't the measuring stick for the changes be: "How many new Merge
> operation users are confused by the new terminology?"

Well the goal has to be minimum confusion for everyone, so we will need
lots of opinions, existing users and new users. But as you may have
read, several people didn't find my ideas any real improvement, and
Stefan is planning to come up with his own ideas soon, so I will wait
until then before commenting any further.

Keep watching the list, we value your comments.

Simon

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