[PATCH 3 of 5 paths v3] ui.paths: filter config options containing "." (BC)

Matt Mackall mpm at selenic.com
Sun Mar 15 14:55:37 CDT 2015


On Sat, 2015-03-14 at 22:18 -0700, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com> wrote:
> 
> > I agree that the odds of people having foo.bar paths is probably 100%:
> > it is after all how DNS names are structured. Unfortunately it's also
> > how our config namespace is structured.
> >
> 
> I think it is important to distinguish between option names, option values,
> and command line arguments.
> 
> For option values and command line arguments, absolutely we'll have periods
> because of hostnames. However, I believe our logic there is to first
> attempt to parse those values as URLs, then fall back to a filesystem-local
> path if a scheme isn't present. (Follow-up idea: have Mercurial store URLs
> in more situations because bare strings are more ambiguous.)

$ hg push selenic.com
pushing to selenic.com
abort: repository selenic.com not found!

No, we treat bare hostnames as local paths.

But I think people will actually have hostname-like entries as path
_keys_, not values (where they won't actually work). And then use those
path keys on the command line. For instance, I can imagine a project
split between foo.org (open source) and foo.com (with commercial bits)
and someone having both URLs in their ~/.hgrc. Or perhaps the domain is
integral to the verbal identity like "healthcare.gov" (you'd never refer
to it as just "healthcare" or "healthcaregov"). Picture a web design
shop that's deploying to its dozens of clients' sites by domain name... 

> If we limit discussion to option values, I'm still not convinced supporting
> periods is important.
> 
> 
> > > I think a clean, one-time break is better.
> >
> > I greatly prefer zero-time breaks, but I don't have a great alternative
> > suggestion. We do have a bit of precedent in the [auth] section though.
> > Perhaps we can do:
> >
> > [paths]
> > old.style = some/path
> > new.style.path = some/other/pass
> > new.style.option = foo
> > bogus.option = foo
> >
> > Here, hg paths would list:
> >
> > old.style
> > new.style
> > bogus.option
> >
> > (..and we'd also change clone to make the default path setting
> > "default.path".)
> >
> 
> This is an interesting idea. I like how it avoids ambiguity between whether
> an entry is a path or isn't. However, it still has concerns:
> 
> * Long-term Mercurial users now have to convert to a new config style to
> use advanced options.

Yeah, but I think that's pretty minor.

> * Potential for collision between user-defined path names and per-path
> options.

I think the potential only exists for paths of the form "foo.bar.path",
which signals "hey, we have a path with options named foo.bar". So if
you happen to want to name something with a ".path" suffix, you'll now
have to name it ".path.path". Not perfect, but not fatal.

> I imagine a user will see they can add ".pushrev" to a path and produce a
> snippet like:
> 
> [paths]
> central = https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central
> central.pushrev = .
> 
> Without the ".path", this situation is ambiguous. Do we then have to
> examine common option prefixes and do some kind of disambiguation to figure
> out the user's intent?

Yeah, this won't work in my scheme, it'll define two paths. A path X is
only newstyle with options if X.path is defined. So any examples of
central.pushrev would need to include central.path.

>  What about something like this:
> 
> [paths]
> repo.prod = https://prod.hg.example.com/repo
> repo.prod.pushrev = .
> repo.dev = https://dev.hg.example.com/repo
> 
> I still think unsupported periods in path names is looking pretty
> reasonable. So does separate [path.x] sections.

What's unsupported periods again? That's no dots in path keys?

I don't think that's going to work. I don't know that path.x sections
work either, because the config format actually already treats dots as
hierarchy separators and [foo] is just a special case for the tree top
level. In other words [foo]bar.x and [foo.bar]x are both aliases for
foo.bar.x.

Perhaps we can use a horrible separator. I don't think we can use #
because it's already used for branches. Let's say it's "+"[1]. Then we
can have:

[paths]
repo = https://...
repo+pushrev = .

This is kinda ok because it suggests adding something on. Another
possibility is "--", which lets us suggest a relation to the
corresponding command-line options.

[1] Not perfect, but Windows filesystems are hostile to it.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.




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