[darcs-users] What is the status of --no-pristine-tree?

[Trent W. Buck]

src/darcs.tex says:

  Alternate formats for the pristine tree
  =======================================

  By default, every Darcs repository contains a complete copy of the
  "pristine tree", the working tree as it would be if there were no
  local edits.  By avoiding the need to consult a possibly large number
  of patches just to find out if a file is modified, the pristine tree
  makes a lot of operations much faster than they would otherwise be.

  Under some circumstances, keeping a whole pristine tree is not
  desirable.  This is the case when preparing a repository to back up,
  when publishing a repository on a public web server with limited
  space, or when storing a repository on floppies or small USB keys.  In
  such cases, it is possible to use a repository with no pristine tree.

  Darcs automatically recognizes a repository with no pristine tree.  In
  order to create such a tree, specify the --no-pristine-tree flag to
  darcs initialize or darcs get.  There is currently no way to switch an
  existing repository to use no pristine tree.

  The support for --no-pristine-tree repositories is fairly new, and has
  not been extensively optimized yet.  Please let us know if you use
  this functionality, and which operations you find are too slow.

src/Darcs/Commands/Get.lhs says

  In order to save disk space, you can use get with the
  --no-pristine-tree flag to create a repository with no pristine tree.
  Please see Section disk-usage for more information.

If --no-pristine-tree is used, and then someone changes the working
tree, will "darcs whatsnew" break, or just be very slow?

I also expected --no-pristine-tree to break --lazy, since --lazy works
by copying the pristine tree.  When I tested --no-pristine-tree with a
darcs-2 repo, I found that it copied the pristine tree!  Does this mean
that --no-pristine-tree is only for deprecated darcs-1 formats (hashed
and old-fashioned-inventory)?