Whenever I look at dependency calculation, for instance to solve editing gitbranch template is really slow, it takes me a while to get my head round the concept of influences. The design documentation is in dependency types, but that takes the form of a long discussion between Joey and Will, so it's difficult to tell which of the attempts to define influences were incorrect or have been superseded.

I think it would be valuable to have brief documentation as doc-comments in the source code. My branch adds some; please confirm whether I got it right?

It would also be great to have a definition of what should or shouldn't be counted as an influence, and which influences should count as static or dynamic, perhaps analogous to git-annex's design pages and linked from the match_foo section of write. I haven't written this myself because I'm somewhat stuck on the subtlety of what "indirectly influenced" means... --smcv

the documentation looks correct to me, as far as i understand dependencies. the documentation on influences_static could add a "Static influences are what make pagespec_match_list more efficient than repeated pagespec_match_list." to give an idea of why it is there in the first place. --chrysn

done in 3.20140916 --s