[darcs-devel] the straw that broke the camel's back

[Stefan O'Rear]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 01:55:26AM +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> > The fact that this problem occurs rather often suggests that there are
> > serious issues with darcs as it stands.
> 
> I think we are all aware of that.  In its current state, Darcs has
> been a great research project, and has borne some very interesting
> results:
> 
>   - the ``repos as an unordered set of patches'' mostly works and is
>     easy on the brain;
>   - it is possible to design a VC system with a user interface made
>     for humans.
> 
> On the other hand, Darcs has four very serious and one moderately
> serious issue:
> 
>   - Darcs is not complete (some patches fail to commute);
>   - Darcs is not correct (will sometimes write an incorrect repo);
>   - Darcs is subject to combinatorial explosion;
>   - Darcs is coded inefficiently in some areas.
> 
> It is not entirely clear to me what the right thing to do is -- work
> on improving Darcs, or throw away everything and start again from
> scratch now that we all know so much more.  I really wish I had the
> opportunity to buy a few pints to David, Erik, Tommy, Ian and whoever
> else and discuss all of this.

Certainly; I think darcs is far too old for a first-system.  It needs a
complete rewrite, and I would like to do this myself.  The main reason I
haven't done this is lack of adequate documentation.

Over in Greater Haskell Land you can learn the results of most good
ideas in the form of the creator's 800-page doctoral thesis.  Too bad
David Roundy isn't a CS major :)

(Specifically, the documentation isn't very precise and doesn't give me
much of a clue about what mergers and conflictors are, or even which is
used for what circumstance.  I've already invented a conflict semantics
of my own, but I'd like to be compatible with darcs :) )

Stefan
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-devel/attachments/20070712/1094b83d/attachment.pgp