[darcs-users] darcs UI: send = bundle file; send --mail = mail

[Benjamin Franksen]

Iago Abal wrote:
> In my opinion you made a very good choice by making -O the default
> behavior of darcs send. I don't see any problem with a command named
> "send" that does not send anything... its purpose is to generate a bundle
> *to be sent*, and it can actually send it automatically if you want.
> 
> When I started contributing Darcs I had that problem, and it was
> irritating. I wanted to upload a patch but I didn't have too much time.
> Hence, I "configured" my sendmail and run darcs send... a few days later I
> discovered that my sendmail configuration was wrong and the mail was lost.

I support the idea that a (auto-named) patch bundle file is created by 
default, so it cannot be lost, but I would like darcs to at least try to 
send it by default, too. Darcs should do what the command says w/o any extra 
configuration; if send no longer sends mail, I would have to add yet another 
line to my ~/.darcs/default.

Installing and (mis-;)configuring sendmail is not necessary at all, if all 
you need is a sendmail command that forwards the mail to your provider, you 
can use a small package named esmtp with a very simple configuration file 
(~/.esmtprc, or, if not present, the system wide /etc/esmtprc), see e.g. 
http://linux.die.net/man/1/esmtp .

Apropos, some UI changes I'd like to propose to make the darcs experience 
more predictable and even more useful than it already is:

changes:
  --interactive should be the default; displaying the complete history of a
  repository in one big rush is almost never what you want, except for
  scripts that analyse the repo, and the default UI should always be
  optimized for the interactive user.

whatsnew:
  should have a --interactive option (which should be the default),
  the idea is hunks (and replaces, etc) are displayed one at a time;
  I'd also like to have an option to select the type of change that
  whatsnew reports, e.g --replace-only or --hunk-only.

send:
  --interactive should be the default; furthermore, it should *ask* whether
  you want to edit the description, just as record does with the long
  comment.

diff:
  do not wait for the user to "Hit return to move on..."; I already ordered
  darcs to do what I told it to do, so why do I have to confirm? If the idea
  is to guard against (potentially destructive) errors in the configuration
  file, why not rather add a --dry-run option, so I can try any changes out
  and see what would be executed?

-- 
Ben Franksen
()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail 
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   - against proprietary attachments