From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: resolving ambiguity in action stamps Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 16:34:01 +0900 Message-ID: <87r3ze4pw6.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <87wq9841zx.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <20140913053525.GA15582@thyrsus.com> <87tx4c3t4k.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <20140913.092630.2301242291023129455.hanche@math.ntnu.no> <20140913105058.GA16776@thyrsus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1410680084 13204 80.91.229.3 (14 Sep 2014 07:34:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 07:34:44 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Harald Hanche-Olsen , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: esr@thyrsus.com Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Sep 14 09:34:37 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1XT4KR-00087R-HD for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 09:34:35 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:53193 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XT4KQ-0000Xo-Vk for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 03:34:34 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:46448) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XT4KA-0000M3-5G for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 03:34:24 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XT4K4-0005UG-8O for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 03:34:18 -0400 Original-Received: from shako.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.161]:45835) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XT4K3-0005Qh-UX for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 03:34:12 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by shako.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 05B921C38F5; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 16:34:02 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id E8BAD1A28C8; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 16:34:01 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: <20140913105058.GA16776@thyrsus.com> X-Mailer: VM undefined under 21.5 (beta34) "kale" acf1c26e3019 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 3.x X-Received-From: 130.158.97.161 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:174283 Archived-At: Eric S. Raymond writes: > Both of Harald's objections are, alas, sound. Only because your requirements are unsound. It's not possible to specify a revision compactly, let alone uniquely, in a "preorder of patches" VCS like Darcs. (Unlike the example below, it's not always going to be the case that you can refer to a particular patch as a summary of the situation.) So broad portability across VCSes is out. And it's not really necessary: at any given time there's only going to be one canonical VCS for a project, so references can (and IMO should) use that VCS's identifier. Constructing a reference that is reasonably accurate and meaningful to humans is also very difficult (at least). Even restricting yourself to a single VCS like git, there may be insufficient metadata to remove ambiguity. On the other hand, although for academics "Raymond [1997]" is a form that makes a lot of sense, in referencing commits in a VCS it's nowhere near as useful. Human memory for commit content has a halflife of about 2 weeks -- and that's assuming you were both following emacs-devel and emacs-commits at the time. Then you go and look for it -- guess what, grepping the ChangeLog doesn't work if (as in many projects, and I understand that many hope Emacs will eventually be one of them) you don't have ChangeLogs. I really don't see what's wrong with 2014-09-15 Stefan Monnier * JOKES (dumb_joke_internal): Revert Eric Raymond's commit of 2014-04-01 [deadbeefcafefeeddefaceddeafadd0123456789]. It was a funny-once, Man. Or whatever formatting you want, as long as the SHA1 ref is easily parsable out of the text. Regards,