Re: [PATCH] Disable VC when Emacs is noninteractive -batch

From: Michael Olson <mwolson@gnu.org>
To: rms@gnu.org
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Disable VC when Emacs is noninteractive -batch
Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 07:40:54 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87sl6vfu7t.fsf@hariken.mwolson.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <E1IIJVu-0000a6-3i@fencepost.gnu.org> (Richard Stallman's message of "Tue, 07 Aug 2007 03:29:58 -0400")

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Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     Please name even one good use for VC in batch/noninteractive mode.
>     I can't think of a single one, myself, and knowing a good use
>     would allow me to adjust my argument accordingly.
>
> Relicensing a program is the sort of situation where you might
> want to do this.

What part does VC play in such a change?

> We might want to arrange to automatically answer "yes" when it
> asks whether to check out a deleted a file, if in batch mode.

For any backend other than RCS, that would be bad.  When I delete a
file, I don't want it to come back during compilation.  That could lead
to confusing scenarios where something works in development versions of
a program (because a bug is hidden by the presence of the deleted file),
but fails to work for a released version.  Further, it would be just
plain annoying, because I would have to remember to re-delete the file
before checking in any change.

If we did insist on keeping VC active in batch mode (which I still don't
see a good reason to do), then for any backend other than RCS, the
default answer to that question ought to be "no" rather than "yes".
Further, even when using RCS, maintainers ought not to depend on Emacs
to check out a missing file for them -- they should instead have a
Makefile target which ensures that the file is checked out properly
before compiling it or doing other work with it.  Otherwise they would
be forcing people to use Emacs when developing their projects, which
would create resentment.  (Admittedly, this is perhaps a contrived case,
since I don't know of any collaborative projects that still use RCS, but
the principle remains.)

-- 
       Michael Olson -- FSF Associate Member #652     |
 http://mwolson.org/ -- Jabber: mwolson_at_hcoop.net  |  /` |\ | | |
            Sysadmin -- Hobbies: Lisp, GP2X, HCoop    | |_] | \| |_|
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