[PATCH 2 of 2 STABLE] mq: rename the --mq option to --queue

[Brendan Cully]

On Friday, 05 March 2010 at 00:03, Dan Villiom Podlaski Christiansen wrote:
> On 4 Mar 2010, at 23:36, Brendan Cully wrote:
> 
> > Since the extension is called 'mq' (e.g., --config extensions.mq=), I
> > think it's a fine, intuitive identifier. I don't think long options
> > should have a mandatory minimum number of letters.
> 
> Well, yes, but isn't the proper name of it Mercurial Queues? (When
> ‘Mercurial’ is implicit, perhaps just Queues.) Currently, the
> extension and its UI are somewhat ‘magical’ — I'd like to make it
> *less* so, and I believe that is best done by referring to the patch
> queue as such, rather than an MQ. I understand and agree that MQ is
> a well-known abbreviation to experienced Mercurial users, but I
> don't believe that applies to newcomers.
> 
> One of the things I care about is usability, and I'd like to make
> queues more usable. Since the sprint, I've been thinking about how
> to improve the UI of the MQ extension, and I believe that a more
> conceptual approach to it would be good. Instead of ‘the MQ’, it
> believe the patch queue as such would be better referred to as just
> ‘the queue’.
> 
> However, I don't actually *talk* much about Mercurial on a
> day-to-day, so my opinion may be somewhat biased ;)

The advantage of 'queue' over 'mq' is that it's an English word. But
I'm not really sure that's much of an advantage. Imagine these
conversations with a new Hg user:

Q: What do you think the MQ extension does?
A: No idea.

Q: What do you think the Queue extension does?
A: No idea.

In fact, queue is a bit misleading, since the actual model is a
stack. Since 'mq' doesn't mean anything, it also can't confuse
people. Furthermore, I don't think we can rename the extension, and
really, nobody calls it 'queues', so --mq is easier to remember.

I can't even tab-complete --queue until I get to --que, thanks to
--quiet.

We're having a pretty hard time picking a color for the bike shed,
aren't we?