User-Agent string, my patch and privacy concerns.

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:56:50 -0700, "Eric M. Hopper" <hopper at omnifarious.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 18:35 +0300, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
>> On Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:51:22 -0700, "Eric M. Hopper" <hopper at omnifarious.org> wrote:
>>   [web]
>>   user_agent_format = {myprotocol}
>>   user_agent_format = {myprotocol} ({pythonversion}; {hgversion}; ${osversion})
>>
>> Then we can use the templater to expand the keywords shown above, or other
>> things that may be considered useful in a User-Agent header.
>>
>> IMHO, the default should be to keep the current behavior.  Allowing extra info
>> would be possible, but not forced `unexpectedly' upon existing users :-)
>
> That's a really interesting proposal.  The thing is, if the default is
> to keep the current behavior then some things that might be really nice,
> like being able to know approximately how many people who pull stuff are
> using Windows, an old version of Python or an old version of Mercurial.
>
> I've often wondered, for example, how important Python 2.3 support
> really is.  If a maintainer is thinking of moving to a version of
> Mercurial that may do things an older version won't understand fully, it
> would be nice to know how much of an impact that's going to have
> independent of who complains the loudest.

That's a reasonable idea.  I'm just worried if the current Mercurial
users will find it similar to `phoning home' and complain loudly.

Now, it's now the same as M$ programs phoning home and saying that you
have so and so versions of so and so software.  It's half-way there though.

- Giorgos