Re: Multi-headed branches (hydra? :)) for basic patch calculus

From: Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 3, 2006, 01:15 UTC
Message-ID: <46a038f90604021815g453c57c9pf95a0f70a62f2fbc@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <1143950852.21233.23.camel@localhost.localdomain>

On 4/2/06, Sam Vilain <sam@vilain.net> wrote:

> If the plumbing or a porcelain could be smart enough to automatically
> create hydra when patches are not dependent, then many of the benefits
> of patch calculus might come for free, without having to create these
> complicated sounding entities manually.

I'm not too excited about the benefits of patch calculus -- it seems to break many general usage scenarios(*) and I haven't seen many examples of those benefits that aren't a bit contrived.

* - For instance: the common practice of having a patch series where
you create a new function and later add calls to it breaks quite
seriously under patch calculus.

Are there common usage scenarios where patch calculus helps more than it hurts? Preferrably without involving manual recording of dependencies or full language parsers that guess them.

cheers,