[darcs-users] darcs group/ungroup (was poll: how can we help you contribute to darcs?)

[Eric Y. Kow]

> So with darcs 2 primitive patch semantics, you could have a beautiful
> split implementable, without too much effort (basically just moving
> all primitive patches that touched a given set of files to the new
> repository... you don't lose the connection with darcs, either --
> that's the beauty of it).

Just to chime in, being able to split apart and merge repositories is
a feature that I would use.  And as Petr points out (nice idea), the
darcs 2 primitive patch semantics could make this actually quite easy
to do in a very darcsy way.

If I may sketch out a possible UI... darcs could have two new
supercommands group and ungroup.  The sub-commands would provide
different lines along which to split the patches and join them
back together.  [maybe only ungroup would be a supercommand;
presumably, group would always work the same way]

So, if Luke wanted to implement something like this, (for which we would
love him), he could provide an 'ungroup touching', so that for example,

 darcs ungroup touching README Makefile src/foo

would search patches and split off any patches, so that changes
affecting either README, Makefile or src/foo are broken off into
a separate named patch

Perhaps there are other group/ungroup subcommands for splitting
patches?

  darcs ungroup all

could just shatter the patch into its primitive parts.

  darcs ungroup all --interactive

should just prompt you for individual changes.  There could also be

  darcs ungroup depends --match

which lets you search for patches and split off anything that depends
on some other patch, either selected interactively or through the
--patch/--match interface.  What's nice is that one could re-use a
lot of the pre-existing infrastructure: patch matchers, super and
subcommands, etc.  Implementing this could also introduce new
infrastructure, the 'touching' feature, which could then be added to
our list of patch matchers.

Sounds like a fun project, the kind of thing that can be taken up in
small bits and pieces and fleshed out.  Any thoughts? Takers?

-- 
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9
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