subrepo wish list

[Harvey Chapman]

On Apr 19, 2010, at 9:15 AM, Warren Postma wrote:

> 1.  Users develop the concept that hg operations are "repositorial".
> 2.  Another tool that is called something else (mhg for "meta-hg") handles "meta-repositorial" operations. 

> I guess I'm saying: Are we not capable of typing "mhg"  (meta-hg) and having a separate tool here?  Is it not the work of five minutes to make this a separate tool (written in python of course) that can load up and manipulate hg, or even merely interact with hg via its official public command-line, and would that not be *better*?

Well, I liken hg to gnu make. I have several small source libraries each with its own directory and makefile for building. I also have a combined library with a makefile that recursively calls each of the smaller libraries. Here, make is used for both the individual builds and the "meta-"build as well. It is both reasonable and expected that mercurial should be able to support this type of model since it so pervasive (and not just with software development). In addition, most new users of make don't begin by writing recursive makefiles, yet the ability exists. The same mindset should apply to mercurial, and indeed, it already does. Example: the mq extension.

Given that I think mercurial needs full meta-support (to use your term), it needs to be done in a way as to not clutter up the mental usage model.

Harvey