Re: WIP: promote nmbug to user sync tool

[Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>]

Hello,

On Sat 07 May 2022 at 09:01pm -03, David Bremner wrote:

> Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> writes:
>
>> Just looking at my current usage, there are two cases where I've wrapped
>> nmbug in some additional myrepos scripting.  The first is a status
>> command:
>>
>>     status =
>>         nmbug-spw status | grep -v "^U\s" || true
>>         # `nmbug status` does not catch committed but unpushed changes
>>         git --no-pager log --branches \
>>             --not --remotes \
>>             --simplify-by-decoration --decorate --oneline
>>
>> Possibly notmuch-git could learn how to do this?
>
> Perhaps. I think I would prefer something a bit more concise like a
> count of unpushed commits. Do you tend to actually have meaningful
> commit messages?

I don't.  I just want output if there are unpushed changes and no output
if not.  A count sounds good to me.

> Personally I would be more worried about checkout (e.g. after init)
> wiping out my notmuch database, since an errant commit can always be
> reverted. Both cases seem to be covered by your heuristic. Perhaps we
> could just count the size of the update, and insist on a --force option
> if it is too large.

I think you're right.  It makes sense to build in safety features only
for the case of accidentally wiping out the db.

Either instead or in addition to something size-based, how about
requiring --force if there do not exist any tags with the prefix in the
notmuch database already?  The size thing is brittle; in my scripting
attempts, I've encountered several annoying edge cases.

> For what it's worth, you can already call
>
>     notmuch git -C $HOME/lib/nmbug-spw -p spw:: ...
>
> if that is more convenient.
>
> The defaults have already changed in my latest working branch so the
> default repo is under $XDG_DATA_HOME/notmuch/$NOTMUCH_PROFILE/git, and
> the default prefix is ''.  But re-reading this, I see see we polled two
> people and got two answers for what a reasonable default prefix is, so a
> configuration item is definitely needed for prefix. Probably it is also
> reasonable to have one for repo location.

Coolio.

-- 
Sean Whitton