Re: baz format archives in tla

Ludovic Courtès wrote:

> Tom: Could you please explain this?  I fail to understand how empty
> categories and branches can be helpful to administrators.

Most pragmatically: when access control is being applied to a shared
archive on a per-directory basis, empty categories and branches allow
an administrator with global rights to create a category or branch
for a third party, set the rights for that category or branch, and let the
3rd party populate it later.   In the baz format, that can only be done
with empty versions.   (Consider a small development office with
multiple teams committing into an archived owned by a release
management team.)   Yes, as someone pointed out, you can get similar
access control granularity by putting each category or branch in a
separate archive but consider, just for starters, the impact this has (for
the release mgt team, in our example, on the utility of archive browsers.

More esoterically, the arch namespace is there to record intended
relations among branches (as contrasted with the physical history
relations).   It is useful to express an intended relationship even to a
category or branch that doesn't yet exist.   As an example, suppose
you are going to teach a software engineering 101 course.  It may
be helpful to give students a script to run, as they begin some project,
that lays out the pattern of categories and branches they are expected
to use when turning their work in.   A student can browse the new (empty
of revisions) archive, consult the class notes, and see "Ah, the 
--milestones--
branches are where I should tag certain revisions to turn in various
homework assignments."

Was that helpful?

-t



> Hi,
>
> [email protected] (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>
>   
>> Thomas Lord <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>>     
>>> And, meanwhile,  the loss of the ability to create empty categories
>>> and branches
>>> still strikes me as a loss.   With that capability, an archive
>>> administrator can
>>> set up categories and branches and say to a project "your stuff goes
>>> *here*".
>>> Without them, the admin can not.
>>>       
>> I don't understand the usage pattern you're referring to.  Can you
>> elaborate?
>>     
>
> Tom: Could you please explain this?  I fail to understand how empty
> categories and branches can be helpful to administrators.
>
> Thanks,
> Ludovic.
>
>