Backwards compatibility (was Re: how can you tell you have merged?)

[Peter Arrenbrecht]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 10:25 PM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian at cadifra.com> wrote:
> On 11.09.2008 21:24, Matt Mackall wrote:
>> I would really appreciate it if people who are not new here would
>> refrain from suggesting changes that break backwards compatibility.
>> We can't change the default output of status, it will kill dozens of
>> innocent programs including people's build systems and IDEs. Such
>> changes are categorically off-limits and I'm growing quite weary of
>> pointing that out (it feels like it's a daily occurrence).
>
> One root of this problem probably is that it would have been
> better if Mercurial would have separated the two use case
> categories:
> (1) tools using hg on the command line and (2) real users
> interacting with hg directly on the command line.
>
> Also, a couple of tools have to use Mercurial via the command
> line only because of license incompatibilities.
>
> But yes, even *I* am aware that that ship has sailed.
>
> We are now restricted with the command line interface by
> the tools that already depend on it.

Maybe I am missing something, but I thought one could differentiate
between output to pipes and to interactive terminals? With things
normally omitted for pipes being available to them through an explicit
flag. So:

  $ hg status
  ...
  (this is an uncommitted merge)

  $ hg status | cat
  ...

  $ hg status --console | cat
  ...
  (this is an uncommitted merge)

Just airing an idea.
-parren