When a large "revert" operation takes place, the user is greeted to the message:
  "Reading inventory of repository /home/me/devel/project inventory"
which in time turns into "Finished reverting."

The last word, "inventory", is out of place.

The line is printed by finishedOneIO in read_repo_private
[src/Darcs/Repository/DarcsRepo.lhs]

Since reading the inventory file is the only IO operation in read_repo_private
(or more precisely: finishedOneIO is called only once), there is no "progress"
to report.

The message would make more sense if there were other files being read and the
the word "inventory" would have been replaced by their names, to show the
progress. But, this isn't the case here.

This is only because you've not yet tagged your repository, or the repository
has not been optimized.  If your inventory was broken on tags (as ghc's is, for
instance), you'd see as various inventories are read.

In that case, can the printed message visually separate the "current task"?
Something like:

"Reading inventory of repository /home/me/devel/project... [inventory]"

I agree with salty-horse that the updated text is better. Further, I believe
even this  istoo much detail to go into by default. 

An average use shouldn't ever need to know what an "inventory" is. This is an
internal implementation detail that is not important to understand to use darcs
productively. 

Unless "--debug" is turned on, I suggest simplifying the message to be just
something like: 

"Reading files" or "Reading files (1/5)"

I feel the same way about displaying the full hash name in other progress
reports. The hash name would only need to be seen if you are debugging.
Otherwise, "Patch (23/45)" is sufficient.

Ori (salty-horse): may I confirm that your proposal is to print out which
inventory we are reading from in the progress report?

kowey, my suggestion is to make it less confusing.
The message "Reading inventory [...] inventory" makes little sense for newbies.

I'm OK with both suggestions made so far:
Either separate the inventory name from the rest of the message with
parentheses, or, as markstos suggested, not printing out the inventory name at all.

On Wed, Sep 02, 2009 at 14:52:51 +0000, Ori Avtalion wrote:
> kowey, my suggestion is to make it less confusing.
> The message "Reading inventory [...] inventory" makes little sense for newbies.
 
Ok, I get it now, thanks! (I didn't understand that this bug was about two
instances of the same word 'inventory'; the second being the actual filename)

> I'm OK with both suggestions made so far:
> Either separate the inventory name from the rest of the message with
> parentheses, or, as markstos suggested, not printing out the inventory name at
all.

I personally like the first solution better
  reading inventory of repository /home/me/devel/project 'inventory'

or hiding filenames/hashes but retaining high level description
  reading inventory files (1/4)
  reading hashed pristine files (1/48)
  reading patches (49/98)

My attitude about this sort of thing is that hiding detail just for its own sake
(in the name of simplicity) isn't doing anybody any favours.  If somebody
submits a patch of some kind, we can discuss the matter on list.