[tahoe-dev] [tahoe-lafs] #776: users are confused by "tahoe rm"

[Brian Warner]

James A. Donald wrote:
> This is not going to add to user comprehension.  Brian's
> explanation does add to user comprehension.

I hope someday to explain unix to a small child in this way. But Irby is
Zooko's son, and the explanation is his :-).

David-Sarah Hopwood wrote:

> The semantics of 'tahoe rm' can't actually be changed unless we add a
> 'destroy' operation. That would require incompatible changes to the
> crypto protocol, so it can't be done now. And making rm output a
> treatise on link-based filesystem semantics is obviously not
> practical. If you have a suggestion for improving the wording while
> still keeping it concise and informative, though, that would be
> helpful.

Hm, perhaps "N files/directories disconnected" ?

My argument for continuing to use "delete" to explain what "tahoe rm"
does is that, from the point of view of the directory you passed in,
those files *are* deleted. If you happen to know of a different path to
them, then sure, they're still around in some sense, but a lot of folks
will think of those as effectively being separate copies anyways.

"foo/bar.txt" was present, then you did "rm foo/bar.txt", and now
there's no longer a "foo/bar.txt". Smells like deletion to me :).

cheers,
 -Brian