[darcs-users] best practices for vendor branches?

[Christopher League]

Hi all, I first tried darcs a few months ago, and it has quickly  
replaced subversion as my default VC tool for personal projects, and  
a few collaborative ones too.

One thing for which I still rely on subversion is tracking vendor  
releases (not directly from their repository, but from their release  
tarballs, as described here:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch07s05.html
In my case, this is mostly for keeping local customizations, things  
that will probably never be incorporated upstream.

I understand that there may be some problems simulating vendor  
branches with a patch-oriented VC rather than a tree-oriented one.   
David himself more or less dismissed this use in May 2005 (see thread  
links below).  On the other hand, some people on the list seem to  
have invented workflows that avoid the problems.  Unfortunately, I'm  
finding it tough to piece together what to do from messages scattered  
across the list archive.

So, I guess this is a humble plea to someone who has figured this out  
to add something to the wiki, perhaps linked under BestPractices.   
For now, there doesn't seem to be any advice on the wiki related to  
tracking a vendor's non-darcs development within darcs.  Providing  
something like the use case in the subversion book would be extremely  
helpful.

Below are some of the list threads I've been reading on this issue.   
I'm not necessarily looking to rehash the tips and debates already  
expressed there, but it has been tough for this newbie to draw any  
conclusions from those threads as to what is the "done thing" (or  
things) in this case.

Thanks,
Chris

Oct 2003 How to "simulate" CVS vendor branches?
http://www.abridgegame.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2003/000537.html

Sep 2004 Hang on pull
http://www.abridgegame.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2004-September/ 
003159.html

May 2005 when darcs is slow, it is really really slow
http://www.abridgegame.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2005-May/007586.html