[darcs-devel] Making a hashed repository offline safe

[Ben Coburn]

I have a bit of a question / suggestion about the hashed repository  
format....

Is there an option to force darcs to download everything, thus making  
a repository safe for offline use?

I would suggest that an option like "--offline-safe" could be added  
to "pull" and "get" operations to force them to *not* be lazy about  
retrieving data. It should also be possible to take a repository in  
an unknown state of offline safeness and make it safe, so that one  
will not shoot one's self in the foot later when using it offline. I  
think "darcs optimize --offline-safe" would be an appropriate command  
for this action.

Some example use cases:

The backup repository. Say you backup your main repository with a  
cron job that runs "darcs pull -a" regularly. In order for this to  
continue to be a real backup, you would need to run "darcs pull -a -- 
offline-safe".

Travel and vacation time. Say you are talking a laptop on a 10 plane  
flight, visiting a remote location, or otherwise planning to be  
without network access. In order to keep using the repository while  
offline. You need a way to proactively ask darcs to download anything  
that might be missing, while you still have an internet connection.  
Thus the utility of "darcs optimize --offline-safe".

Thanks again, to everyone who has put so much energy into improving  
darcs!

Regards, Ben Coburn