[Svnmerge] [PATCH] Prompt for source branch when multiplesourcesexist

[Giovanni Bajo]

Madan U S <madan at collab.net> wrote:

>> I've attached the same patch regenerated against r19109 to make
>> things > easier. Is it fit to be committed?
>>
>>> I'm not a fan of this interactivity (why is it necessary?), but will
>>> review this patch.  Some comments:
>>
>
> Where is this discussion happening? This is the only mail in the
> whole thread I
> got. Am I missing something? Or were the previous mails not mailed to
> the list?

They were, two weeks ago.

> 1) A user runs 'svnmerge integrated' without the -S option (because
> he doesnt know
> there are multiple heads)
> 2) 'svnmerge integrated' responds saying there are multiple heads
>
> Now, why should he use
> 'svnmerge integrated -i'
>    instead of
> 'svnmerge integrated -S path'
>
> ????
>
> Seems like an afterthought.

Yes. OTOH, people could have --interactive in their svnmerge.conf option file
so that it's turned on by default *for them*. (No there's no svnmerge.conf file
at the moment, it's just an example :).

I think my main opposition is that disambiguation of head doesn't always
happen. If a command was interactive by default *and* interactive in all its
runs (except, maybe, in case of errors), I wouldn't mind it much. But having a
command which is interactive by default *but* interactive only in some case
(eg: disambiguation of head) looks like a good recipe to break every script
which calls svnmerge. I would bet money that if we put interactive on by
default, there *will* be someone which bites the bullet.

Personally, I'm more than satisfied with Madan's patch to list possibile heads
URLs.

> 1) How does svnmerge handle the interactiveness of the commandline
> commands (like
> svn) that are being invoked by svnmerge?

I'm not aware of any case in which svnmerge triggers interaction in svn. I
heard svn has a --non-interactive option which could be used in these cases.
Notice that I'm uncomfortable thinking that somewhere, somehow, svn might go to
interactive mode, and it's not clear when or how. I don't think we should fall
into the same trap with svnmerge.

Giovanni Bajo