Re: Improvements to ‘debian/watch’ for fetching from VCS

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Noah Slater <nslater@tumbolia.org> writes:

> On Fri, Apr 03, 2009 at 10:04:21AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > * the plethora of different concepts for mapping identifiers to
> >   specific working trees in different VCSen (revision-id and branches
> >   and tags, oh my!)
> 
> This could be possible with a set of configurable rules, akin to make.
> 
>   get-recent:
>       svn co http://example.org/ $DIR
> 
>   get-revision:
>       svn co -r $REV http://example.org/ $DIR
> 
> As long as you standardised the variables passed, and the location,
> should work.

That's the trouble though. AIUI, different VCSen have different ways
of identifying a specific state of the working tree; we have not only
revisions, but also tags, branches, threads, heads, and probably
others I've forgotten. Should all of those be allowed? Is that too
complex an interface?

As for “latest”: is there an unambiguous “latest” for every
repository? What does this mean with repositories that have
simultaneous lines of history within the same location?

-- 
 \          “Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” —Donald |
  `\                                              Robert Perry Marquis |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney