[darcs-users] [ANNOUNCE] First release candidate of darcs 2.2.

[Petr Rockai]

Hi!

I am pleased to announce that darcs 2.2 is coming along nicely. I would like to
ask everyone to give a ride to darcs 2.2, release candidate 1. This release
again comes in two flavours:

1) The source tarball, http://repos.mornfall.net/darcs/darcs-2.2.0rc1.tar.gz,
which can be built using the traditional autoconf-based buildsystem. This is
the fully supported version. After downloading and unpacking, you can issue:

    $ ./configure
    $ make
    $ ./darcs --version

or

    # make install

More detailed instructions inside the tarball (file README).

2) Cabalised source. You can either download a tarball from
http://repos.mornfall.net/darcs/darcs-2.1.99.0.tar.gz and build manually (see
the build instructions in README inside the tarball), or, alternatively, you
can use cabal-install to obtain a copy (the release candidate is now available
on hackage):

    $ cabal update
    $ cabal install darcs

This should give you a darcs binary in ~/.cabal/bin -- you should probably add
that to your PATH.

This is a preliminary changelog since version 2.1.2 (released last November):

  * In interactive record, it is now possible to get a list of
    currently selected hunks (command 'l'). (Christian Kellermann)
  * It is now possible to specify --in-reply-to when using darcs send, to
    generate correct references in the mail header.  (Pavel Shramov)
  * New repositories with --no-pristine-tree can no longer be
    created. This only has effect on legacy darcs-1 repositories.
  * Improvements in Windows support. (Salvatore Insalaco)
  * Performance improvements in `darcs repair` and robustness improvements in
    `darcs check`. (Petr Ročkai)

  * Extensive manual and online help improvements. (Trent W. Buck)

  * Support for GHC 6.10.

  * Overhaul of the make-based build system. (Trent W. Buck)
  * Cabal is now supported as a build method for darcs. (Duncan Coutts, Petr
    Ročkai, Gwern Branwen)

  * First stab at libdarcs -- when building through Cabal, all of darcs
    implementation is now exposed in modules. No API guarantees
    whatsoever. (Eric Kow)
  * Additions to Haddock documentation of the existing darcs modules for
    improved development experience.

  * Improvements in the testing infrastructure. (Christian Kellermann, Gwern
    Branwen)

  * Low-level optimisations in filesystem code. (Ganesh Sittampalam)
  * Numerous major and minor bug fixes, refactorings and cleanups by David
    Roundy, Eric Kow, Jason Dagit, Dmitry Kurochkin, Thorkil Naur, Salvatore
    Insalaco, Christian Kellerman, Florent Becker, Duncan Coutts, Reinier
    Lamers, Ganesh Sittampalam, Petr Ročkai.

Preliminary list of issues that have been fixed in darcs since version 2.1.2:

1223    sporadic init.sh test failure (2.1.1rc2+472)
525     amend-record => darcs patches show duplicate additions
1247    make TAGS is broken
1273    renameFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)
1165    get should print last gotten tag
1249    2.1.2 (+ 342 patches) local drive detection on Windows error
1238    wish: darcs help setpref should list all prefs
1199    Backup files darcs added after external merge
1043    pull => mergeAfterConflicting failed in geteff (2.0.2+)
1117    Whatsnew should warn on non-recorded files
1101    darcs send --cc recipient not included in success message

Thanks to Thorkil Naur for compiling this list.

I would like to thank all contributors -- developers, testers, bystanders --
for helping darcs get along further. It's been hard times recently for darcs,
as many of you probably know. Nevertheless, we are regaining confidence in
future darcs development. No way are we going to leave darcs fall by the
road. I am sure that this one time, I speak for everyone in our developer and
user community.

Yours,
   Petr.

PS: I unfortunately didn't have much time to work on release notes or changelog
or anything like that -- I'll try to take some time to do that kind of work
before the final release. I would also like to ask Kowey (or maybe someone
else, although i don't know of anyone whose role hat would fit better) to
spread the word: it's 5 days till final release, and we absolutely need more
testing coverage. Probably haskell-cafe and blog would be appropriate. However,
this announce probably needs proofreading before getting a wider
circulation. (I'll post on my blog later today, or tomorrow.)

Thanks everyone!

--
Peter Rockai | me()mornfall!net | prockai()redhat!com
 http://blog.mornfall.net | http://web.mornfall.net

"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
 indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
     -- Blair P. Houghton on the subject of C program indentation