Clarification on a VCS-Iface Issue

[Matthew Woehlke]

Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> Did we decide that the actions like commit, add, copy, move (the
> non-Show-versions) have to work without _any_ gui at all, or are they
> allowed to popup dialogs when they need input like authentication
> information, or say a commit message (as import for example misses a
> commit message argument)?
> [snip]
> If we decide this I'll put a clear doc about the difference between
> showwXXX and XXX into the api docs. Currently I'm leaning towards
> something along the lines (assuming we allow gui from XXX methods):
> 
> showXXX - allows the user to input the parameters for the action to be
> executed, always shows this GUI
> 
> XXX - tries to execute the action without user-interaction, but will
> create a dialog if needed for input of missing information

What I recall the difference being is:

showCommit(<files>, "Look, Ma! A commit") pops up a dialog asking for a 
commit message; the message is initialized to "Look, Ma! A commit" but 
can be changed.

commit(<files>, "Automated commit") attempts to commit without showing a 
dialog.

IMO authentication is always allowed, although it would be best if the 
back-ends have some form of 'ask-once' policy, so that e.g. the first 
operation you do in a project asks for a password, and after that we 
cache the information for that repo until the platform (e.g. Quanta, 
KDevelop) is closed.

If we merged things, I think an optional flag specifying the allowed 
level of interaction would be desirable. This would further allow a 
'NoInteraction' flag where things needing authentication would fail.

-- 
Matthew
When in doubt, duct tape!