I often want to have transformations automatically applied when I perform operations between branches.
Very simple example: I have occasionally had readmes for specific branches, that I want to live only in that branch. E.g. README.vcs-branch-name1, README.vcs-branch-name2
Therefore, when merging from branch1 to branch2, I do NOT want to transfer README.vcs-branch1.
But when doing a reverse merge from branch2 to branch1, I do not want to transfer README.vcs-branch2, and I especially do NOT want to delete README.vcs-branch1.
Mercurial's merge tracking will arrange to delete the README.vcs-branch1 file on the reverse merge. Bad, mercurial.
You can think of this as a patch that is implicitly applied whenever there is a cross branch operation. Patch may be too specific: possibly a programmed transformation expressed as code.
(Would also want to notify on cross-branch diffs about such transformations.)
===
A contrived example: if tracking Linux installations, may want to change text in some control files.
E.g. some file may contain a user name, like "UserThatRunsFooBar"
On one machine it may be FooBarUser. On another it may be SamJones.
All of the rest of the diffs to the file may transfer, just not that variable name.
May want a different branch for the two systems.
Hence, a desire for a transformation applied whenever such a file is moved between the branches for the two systems.
===
Partial checkouts can then be considered to be branches with such transformations based on filesystem structure.
A partial checkout of a subtree may have the transformation rules:
* include all stuff under tress T1, T2, ...
* exclude all stuff not under those trees.
Monday, July 14, 2014
DVCS branches = sets++
It is a good idea to be able to identify "sets" of revisions. Both by predicate functions, and by tagging with names.
Branches are sets that automatically extend: when you do a checkin from a workspace with a parent set that is a branch, the checkin automatically gets added to the branch set.
This allows branches to converge and then diverge:
of course, a version can be tagged as being in multiple sets
similarly, a version can be tagged as being in multiple branches at the same time.
Two versions on different branches can merge, and the branches can be converged for a while. But then later diverge.
This can be done on a file by file basis: not just whole repo versions, but individual file versions.
--
repo-versions
repo-version-sets
file-versions
file-version-sets
file-sets - most meaningful when file-version-sets
named-file-sets => these are objects that can be versioned
named-file-set-versions
set operations on named-file-sets
=> partial, union, difference
BTW, parse this as named--file-sets or named(file-sets)
Doesn't need to be named(file-sets). Can be anonymous. Perhaps better called (explicit(file-sets)
or identified(file-sets)
---
I have elsewhere figured out that
partial checkouts are easy,
while partial checkins correspond to creating a branch, at least temporarily, from which changes can be propagated to larger filesets.
Probably with some sort of nagging system:
Partial checkin doesn't automatically check into containing filesets,
but does automatically check into candidate filesets for enclosing branches.
This might be a good place to exploit file versioning as opposed to whole repo version - candidate-filesets or candidate-branches on a per file basis.
Branches are sets that automatically extend: when you do a checkin from a workspace with a parent set that is a branch, the checkin automatically gets added to the branch set.
This allows branches to converge and then diverge:
of course, a version can be tagged as being in multiple sets
similarly, a version can be tagged as being in multiple branches at the same time.
Two versions on different branches can merge, and the branches can be converged for a while. But then later diverge.
This can be done on a file by file basis: not just whole repo versions, but individual file versions.
--
repo-versions
repo-version-sets
file-versions
file-version-sets
file-sets - most meaningful when file-version-sets
named-file-sets => these are objects that can be versioned
named-file-set-versions
set operations on named-file-sets
=> partial, union, difference
BTW, parse this as named--file-sets or named(file-sets)
Doesn't need to be named(file-sets). Can be anonymous. Perhaps better called (explicit(file-sets)
or identified(file-sets)
---
I have elsewhere figured out that
partial checkouts are easy,
while partial checkins correspond to creating a branch, at least temporarily, from which changes can be propagated to larger filesets.
Probably with some sort of nagging system:
Partial checkin doesn't automatically check into containing filesets,
but does automatically check into candidate filesets for enclosing branches.
This might be a good place to exploit file versioning as opposed to whole repo version - candidate-filesets or candidate-branches on a per file basis.
UNIX tools and special characters in filenames
See, fior example: bash - Is there a grep equivalent for find's -print0 and xargs's -0 switches? - Stack Overflow:
'via Blog this'
UNIX tools are great, with their composability - find | grep | xargs | etc.
But UNIX tools have problems handling entities or objects, such as filenames, that have special characters such as blank spaces or newlines within them.
UNIX tools typically operate on lines (grep, xargs'input), or on words separated by whitespace (e.g. backtick expansion, xargs' invocation of other tools).
Some UNIX tools provide the option of using null separated strings, such as find -print0 or xargs -0.
But as the stackoverflow page shows, people want such flexibility in other tools, like grep. Of course, GNU grep has provided it - --null - but there are probably other such tools. ... cat? but of course tr '\n' '\0' ... still, the list continues. Mercurial? Git?
Moreover, null separated is by no means the last word. What if nulls are allowed in the strings that your are manipulating? Need either a quotation system, such as XML (and then we get into the issue of quotes upon quotes), or a strings-with-length system.
I have elsewhere talked about making all UNIX tools work with XML. This is a generalization.
Strings-with-length is most general. Possibly fragile. Possibly XML clauses wrapped around simple "obvious" quoting.
'via Blog this'
UNIX tools are great, with their composability - find | grep | xargs | etc.
But UNIX tools have problems handling entities or objects, such as filenames, that have special characters such as blank spaces or newlines within them.
UNIX tools typically operate on lines (grep, xargs'input), or on words separated by whitespace (e.g. backtick expansion, xargs' invocation of other tools).
Some UNIX tools provide the option of using null separated strings, such as find -print0 or xargs -0.
But as the stackoverflow page shows, people want such flexibility in other tools, like grep. Of course, GNU grep has provided it - --null - but there are probably other such tools. ... cat? but of course tr '\n' '\0' ... still, the list continues. Mercurial? Git?
Moreover, null separated is by no means the last word. What if nulls are allowed in the strings that your are manipulating? Need either a quotation system, such as XML (and then we get into the issue of quotes upon quotes), or a strings-with-length system.
I have elsewhere talked about making all UNIX tools work with XML. This is a generalization.
Strings-with-length is most general. Possibly fragile. Possibly XML clauses wrapped around simple "obvious" quoting.
Saturday, July 05, 2014
I wish that EverNote / OneNote had 1990s era Infocentral's linking
Why InfoCentral?: 'via Blog this'
For the umpteenth time, I am trying to use EverNote to collect shopping research. And it sucks because Evernote doesn't really have hierarchy.
Evernte has notebooks. And stacks. And tags.
OneNote is slightly, moderately, better than EverNote. It has books, folders, groups of folders, and notes can have subnotes. But that's it. Oh, yes, it has tags.
Gmail has tags, aka labels. Or are they folders? Really, folders implemented by constraining the labels system.
Better, but\the tree structured folder constraints make non tree structured labels harder to use. Some labels want to bve tree structured, some do not.
I think the problem is that developers are trying to maintain a paper mindset, using "abstractions" that behave somewhat like real objects. Real paper manila folders cannot be arbitrarily recursively nested, and hence EverNote // OneNote should not. Bzzt!!! Wrong!!! I want to take advantage of what a computer can do that paper cannot do.
And, yes, tags in theory can be used to implement everything that a folder hierarchy has - but only in theory. Because to really accomplish this you have to create a really ugly tag naming system.
I have elsewhere posted about how I even want my tags to be organized, possibly in a hierarchy. Because just plain searching through the approved list of tags can be a pain, when you have a lot of tags.
--
Gnashing my teeth about this, I reminisced about InfoCentral. The very first note organizng software that I used on a tablet PC - way back in 1996-7.
InfoCentral was by no means perfect, but it was better than tags, better than hierarchy. Infocentral was all about links between objects. Links that were reversible, unlike in hierarchy. But where you could use hierchical browsing up to the point where it faild, abd then "shale the tree"
So you could look at a family as
Father - John
Son - William
Grandson - Simon
Granddaughter - Evelyn
Daughter - Sonia
For the umpteenth time, I am trying to use EverNote to collect shopping research. And it sucks because Evernote doesn't really have hierarchy.
Evernte has notebooks. And stacks. And tags.
OneNote is slightly, moderately, better than EverNote. It has books, folders, groups of folders, and notes can have subnotes. But that's it. Oh, yes, it has tags.
Gmail has tags, aka labels. Or are they folders? Really, folders implemented by constraining the labels system.
Better, but\the tree structured folder constraints make non tree structured labels harder to use. Some labels want to bve tree structured, some do not.
I think the problem is that developers are trying to maintain a paper mindset, using "abstractions" that behave somewhat like real objects. Real paper manila folders cannot be arbitrarily recursively nested, and hence EverNote // OneNote should not. Bzzt!!! Wrong!!! I want to take advantage of what a computer can do that paper cannot do.
And, yes, tags in theory can be used to implement everything that a folder hierarchy has - but only in theory. Because to really accomplish this you have to create a really ugly tag naming system.
I have elsewhere posted about how I even want my tags to be organized, possibly in a hierarchy. Because just plain searching through the approved list of tags can be a pain, when you have a lot of tags.
--
Gnashing my teeth about this, I reminisced about InfoCentral. The very first note organizng software that I used on a tablet PC - way back in 1996-7.
InfoCentral was by no means perfect, but it was better than tags, better than hierarchy. Infocentral was all about links between objects. Links that were reversible, unlike in hierarchy. But where you could use hierchical browsing up to the point where it faild, abd then "shale the tree"
So you could look at a family as
Father - John
Son - William
Grandson - Simon
Granddaughter - Evelyn
Daughter - Sonia
Grannddaughter - Mildred
Or shake the tree to look at it from somebody else's point of view
William
Father - John
Son - Simon
Daughter - Evelyn
Sister - Sonia
Son - Simon
Daughter - Evelyn
Sister - Sonia
Niece - Mildred
and then continue browsing.
OK, so InfoCentral wasn't smat enough to know that son's son = grandson.
Or to group sons and daugters as childrewn. Or sisters and brothers as siblings.
And Infocentral wasn't smart enough to do the classic pivoting:
Sales/Year/Month
Sales/Month/Year for month comparisons between different years
But Infocentral allowed me to do a lot of what I wanted.
I wish something like nfoCentral were available on the web, in Evernote or OneNote.
I'd love to have the time to extend the approach.
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Hidden Files in Perforce — Encodo Systems AG
Hidden Files in Perforce — Encodo Systems AG:
'via Blog this'
and probing for a single filename / identifier.
Any query that might potentially return multiple file objects - e.g. opening by "filename", on a system where there can be multiple file objects with the same name, to be disambiguated by extra metadata (keywords, version numbers) can have the above apply.
filenames are just one form of metadata that can apply to file objects. Other metadata may apply: keywords, version numbers, cryptographic signatures. Should be able to handle situation where some but not all metadata is accessible:
e.g. filename is allowed, file contents access is allowed, but access to certain crypto signatures is not allowed - may not even be allowed to see who has signed things.
Each such metadata instance should have any of the above properties: visible, forbidden with error notification, forbidden silently.
This extends past visibility to permissions such as writeable, appendable.
Similar treatment for "obliterate" - completely removing an object from repository. E.g. removing proprietary code erroneously checked in to an open source project, or vice versa:
Such removal is just like a permissions failure, with no possibility of getting around it (except possibly for backups...).
'via Blog this'
Security model:
- user can see everything - file names, file contents
- user can see file names, but not file contents
- with an error indication if trying to access forbidden file contents
- user can see neither file names nor file contents
- with an error indication "some information was forbidden for you to see"
- with no error indication
and probing for a single filename / identifier.
Any query that might potentially return multiple file objects - e.g. opening by "filename", on a system where there can be multiple file objects with the same name, to be disambiguated by extra metadata (keywords, version numbers) can have the above apply.
filenames are just one form of metadata that can apply to file objects. Other metadata may apply: keywords, version numbers, cryptographic signatures. Should be able to handle situation where some but not all metadata is accessible:
e.g. filename is allowed, file contents access is allowed, but access to certain crypto signatures is not allowed - may not even be allowed to see who has signed things.
Each such metadata instance should have any of the above properties: visible, forbidden with error notification, forbidden silently.
This extends past visibility to permissions such as writeable, appendable.
Similar treatment for "obliterate" - completely removing an object from repository. E.g. removing proprietary code erroneously checked in to an open source project, or vice versa:
Such removal is just like a permissions failure, with no possibility of getting around it (except possibly for backups...).
Friday, June 06, 2014
Todo-lists versus task queues
New in my emacs org mode setup:
"TODO-LIST-EMPTY(-!)darkorange" ;; empty list, waiting for stuff to be added.
;; really, there are 2 different concepts
;; (1) a todo-list - an object that may start empty and be completed
;; (2) a task queue - an object which may repeatedly transition from empty to non-empty to empty to ...
;; We use the same term for both.
E.g. there is a queue of personal items - my personal todolist
Or "to-do today" - really a queue.
Or, more like:
"todo today" is a list, which one hopes may be completed at the end of the day. but usually is not.
items left over at the end of the day may be moved forward to tomorrow, or next workday.moved to a longer term todo list or tracker. Or abandoned.
Conceptually, todo-today is a view of my overall todo queue - not necessarily a snapshot at a single point in time.
Something like a query "all todo list items from (midnight,midnight], that are on my top priority list, as of the end of the daty (or the current time, if not at end of day)"
Thursday, June 05, 2014
Smart alarms for when awake and working
The link is vaguely related, but this post was not prompted by it - I just wanted to have some link to the state of the art: Five free apps to help remind you to take a break - TechRepublic:
Like many folks, I sit too much working at my computer.
I have an activity monitor, my Basis Watch. It tracks how long I sit still. In the past few weeks, I have still for as long as 4.5 hours at a stretch - that's absolutely still, in my chair at my keyboard, typing. Nearly every day I sit still for 2 or 3 stretches of 2 hours. Basis allows you to set a goal - "Don't Be A Sitter: from 9-5, get up every N hours." I currently have the goal set at 2 hours - because whenever I move it lower, say 90 minutes, it gets depressing.
I have tried setting alarms to remind myself to get up and work. Right now I have alarms set at 11:30, 2:00pm, and 3:30pm. Why so irregular? See below.
This post was prompted by my 11:30 alarm going off. Unnecessarily, because I had just been active, walking over to a coworker's desk.
Having the alarm go off unnecessarily is irritating. Having it good just as I am settling back at my desk to get back to work disrupts my concentration, breaks my flow. Having the alarm go off when I am 30 or 45 minutes into a good working period, into flow, really pisses me off. I have this theory that interruptions while you are in the middle of a critical b it of work, several things up in the air, in your head, is one of the primary causes of bugs.
What I want is an alarm, a reminder, to get up and move around, that is not at an absolute time. What I want is an alarm that occurs, say, an hour from the last time I got up and moved around. An alarm that is smart enough to reset itself
More: I want an alarm, a reminder, that is smart enough to detect (by some heuristic) if I am in flow or not. (Hmm, I wonder if my Basis watch can reliably distinguish typing. It's accelerometer is on my wrist, after all. Since I am a hunt and peck typist, 60wpm, but 80% right handed, I might have to move my watch from left wrist to my right wrist.)
A reminder that is smart enough to try to look for a period to notify me, after I have been working for an hour, but before I have been working for 2. Looking for a period where I am not working intensely. Possibly looking fior a period where I am not typing intensely - or possibly looking at what I am actually doing, whether I am working, or in Blogger (like now). Which is smart enough to look for a good period to interrupt me. But which might interrupt me no matrter what I am doing after 2 hours of sitting.
You know those prtoducts that try to wake you up at a good point in your sleep cycle? e.g. http://www.sleeptracker.com/how-it-works/
What I want is a product that interrupts me at a good point in my work cycle.
(Ideally it might be smart enough not to interrupt me when I am in a meeting. )
--
Smart alarms when you are awake.
Smart alarms when you are workuing.
Smart alarms should not just be for sleep.
---
(Possibly it could have the sort of incremental alarm feature that a dawn simulator has. A low priority background notification that ramps up gradually.)
---
OK, I should just go ahead and write it myself. I installed Tasker for Android to write such scripts. I am not a big fan of Tasker - stupid graphical interface, but worse, my phone battery always drains. I got the basic timer functionality working, but was not able to detect movement by accelerometer. (Blogging mwe this prompted to re-Google, and I found https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kanetik.movement_detection_trial_premium)
Like many folks, I sit too much working at my computer.
I have an activity monitor, my Basis Watch. It tracks how long I sit still. In the past few weeks, I have still for as long as 4.5 hours at a stretch - that's absolutely still, in my chair at my keyboard, typing. Nearly every day I sit still for 2 or 3 stretches of 2 hours. Basis allows you to set a goal - "Don't Be A Sitter: from 9-5, get up every N hours." I currently have the goal set at 2 hours - because whenever I move it lower, say 90 minutes, it gets depressing.
I have tried setting alarms to remind myself to get up and work. Right now I have alarms set at 11:30, 2:00pm, and 3:30pm. Why so irregular? See below.
This post was prompted by my 11:30 alarm going off. Unnecessarily, because I had just been active, walking over to a coworker's desk.
Having the alarm go off unnecessarily is irritating. Having it good just as I am settling back at my desk to get back to work disrupts my concentration, breaks my flow. Having the alarm go off when I am 30 or 45 minutes into a good working period, into flow, really pisses me off. I have this theory that interruptions while you are in the middle of a critical b it of work, several things up in the air, in your head, is one of the primary causes of bugs.
What I want is an alarm, a reminder, to get up and move around, that is not at an absolute time. What I want is an alarm that occurs, say, an hour from the last time I got up and moved around. An alarm that is smart enough to reset itself
More: I want an alarm, a reminder, that is smart enough to detect (by some heuristic) if I am in flow or not. (Hmm, I wonder if my Basis watch can reliably distinguish typing. It's accelerometer is on my wrist, after all. Since I am a hunt and peck typist, 60wpm, but 80% right handed, I might have to move my watch from left wrist to my right wrist.)
A reminder that is smart enough to try to look for a period to notify me, after I have been working for an hour, but before I have been working for 2. Looking for a period where I am not working intensely. Possibly looking fior a period where I am not typing intensely - or possibly looking at what I am actually doing, whether I am working, or in Blogger (like now). Which is smart enough to look for a good period to interrupt me. But which might interrupt me no matrter what I am doing after 2 hours of sitting.
You know those prtoducts that try to wake you up at a good point in your sleep cycle? e.g. http://www.sleeptracker.com/how-it-works/
What I want is a product that interrupts me at a good point in my work cycle.
(Ideally it might be smart enough not to interrupt me when I am in a meeting. )
--
Smart alarms when you are awake.
Smart alarms when you are workuing.
Smart alarms should not just be for sleep.
(Possibly it could have the sort of incremental alarm feature that a dawn simulator has. A low priority background notification that ramps up gradually.)
---
OK, I should just go ahead and write it myself. I installed Tasker for Android to write such scripts. I am not a big fan of Tasker - stupid graphical interface, but worse, my phone battery always drains. I got the basic timer functionality working, but was not able to detect movement by accelerometer. (Blogging mwe this prompted to re-Google, and I found https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kanetik.movement_detection_trial_premium)
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