From: Mark Walters <markwalters1009@gmail.com>
To: Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU>, notmuch@notmuchmail.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/10] CLI output versioning
In-Reply-To: <87pq2sx86o.fsf@awakening.csail.mit.edu>
References: <1354416002-3557-1-git-send-email-amdragon@mit.edu>
	<87pq2sx86o.fsf@awakening.csail.mit.edu>
User-Agent: Notmuch/0.14+81~g9730584 (http://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/23.4.1
	(x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2012 09:29:02 +0000
Message-ID: <878v98hoyp.fsf@qmul.ac.uk>
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Precedence: list


Hi

Overall this series looks good. As we discussed on irc I think i would
prefer global NOTMUCH_SCHEMA_MIN as I am a little worried about these
proliferating (eg if someone decides text output also needs versioning
etc) In addition, if we do find the distinction useful it would be easy
to add at a later date.

One tiny comment on the manpage updates: now that you mention two return
values explicitly should the other possibilities be mentioned too or are
they so obvious it is not needed?

Would it be worth having some emacs test for the error handling? (eg set
notmuch-command to something giving some stderr and an error) Inherently
these code paths won't be tested much so I think tests could be
particularly useful.

Best wishes

Mark






On Mon, 03 Dec 2012, Austin Clements <amdragon@MIT.EDU> wrote:
> (Sorry; I forgot to include a cover letter.)
>
> This series is intended to help with our long-standing output format
> versioning issue.  While the JSON format is amenable to extension,
> there's still a high barrier to extensions because of the need to
> support them going forward, and an even higher barrier to modifications
> that break backwards compatibility.  Versioning will make the format
> more dynamic, enabling us to easily improve and iterate on it.  It will
> also address the slew of confusing bugs that people encounter when they
> use a mismatched CLI and front-end.
>
> On IRC we've talking about adding version information to the output
> format itself.  This series takes a different and, I think, better
> approach: callers request a specific output format version on the
> command line.  This allows notmuch to remain backwards compatible with
> older format versions when it's easy or necessary.  This also doesn't
> require shoehorning a version number into the output, which would be
> awkward for both the CLI and the consumer.
>
> I called the argument --use-schema, but I'm open to other suggestions.
> --use-schema is technically accurate, but perhaps not as self-describing
> as something like --schema-version or --format-version (to parallel
> --format).
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