CVS

[Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>]

"Bart Schaefer" wrote:
> It is true that adding and removing directories is not the cleanest part
> of CVS, so it would be good to establish some file-structure guidelines
> before we deploy an "official" CVS server.  Just how great the fun will
> be depends on the write-access policy we choose; what were your thoughts?

We shouldn't any more need to add directories unless they going to
hold distinct sets of completions for a particular command set.  I
don't believe it's worth deciding for an individual completion file
whether the command or suite of commands it supports is present or not
--- we could provide an extra script for pruning the installed
functions, if anyone wants to write one --- and hence I don't think
directories like Gnu etc. are particularly useful.  In fact, I can't
currently think of a good example of an extra subdirectory that's
necessary; if the Debian and Linux directories stay fairly empty, I
may put the commands back in User.

To summarise,
- choosing the set of completions appropriate to a local environment
  is more to do with individual mix-and-match on commands than an
  operation en bloc;
- where blocks of commands are concerned, we are now in any case more
  able to provide support in a single file, making new directories
  irrelevant;
- consequently, having extra directories for external commands doesn't
  do the only thing it usefully could do, i.e. help the user with
  organisation.

One thing that might help users through the minefield is a way of
showing what completion will actually be executed in a given context.
To begin with, just being able to find that out for a given command
would be useful.

As far as organizing a CVS archive goes, we could arrange it so that,
for example, Sven made changes to the completion code, and I did it
for the rest, or Bart did in the case of my absence or total
incapacity due to huge volume of patches.  Changes wouldn't appear in
the archive until after they'd been seen on the list --- though at the
present rate of change, how much after is difficult to judge.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@ifh.de>       Tel: +39 050 844536
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/
Dipartimento di Fisica, Via Buonarroti 2, 56100 Pisa, Italy