Re: [GSoC update] Sequencer for inclusion

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 01:07:20PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> > To be precise, the format used includes
> > 
> > 	strategy-option = patience | renormalize
> >
> > to represent the effect of "-Xpatience -Xrenormalize".  My only worry
> > about that is that the "|" can sound like "or", which would seem
> > strange to a user that does not necessarily develop software (so is
> > not thinking about bitfields).  The format used in config files puts
> >
> > 	strategy-option = patience
> > 	strategy-option = renormalize
> >
> > as separate lines.  
> 
> A very good point again. I do not think anywhere in our codebase we use
> "|" as a separator for state files (either used for internal or exposed to
> the end user), and we probably would want to be consistent across
> commands.

I had the same feeling about the "|". I'm a little confused about what
these options are good for, though.

Is it purely about saving some persistent data between runs, and nobody
else is going to look at it? In that case, I don't think it matters what
the format is. Use some unambiguous encoding that we already have
available (like sq_quote_argv and sq_dequote_argv), and write as little
code as possible.

Or is it something that, like the information in .git/rebase-apply,
people might want to read or tweak? In that case, might it make sense to
follow that lead and split things into one file per item? That keeps the
parsing burden extremely low for things like shell scripts (or shell
users) who might want to read or tweak.

-Peff