[darcs-devel] [darcs #507] problem: some people fail to install darcs

dagit at eecs.oregonstate.edu dagit at eecs.oregonstate.edu
Fri Sep 2 09:39:04 PDT 2005


Quoting Zooko via RT <bugs at darcs.net>:

>
> Fri Sep 02 10:46:59 2005: New ticket: 507.
> Transaction: Ticket created by zooko
>        Queue: Darcs
>      Subject: problem: some people fail to install darcs
>        Owner: Nobody
>   Requestors: zooko at zooko.com
>       Status: new
>  Ticket <URL: http://bugs.darcs.net/.//Ticket/Display.html?id=507 >
>
>
> >From anecdotal evidence (about four samples now), the most common reason for
> people to try darcs and then decide not to use it is that they can't get it
> compiled.  This is sadly ironic since darcs has phenomenal ease-of-learning
> and
> ease-of-use once you have a working binary.

Zooko, you forgot to say YMMV :)  When I talk to people and ask them 1) if they
have tried darcs, 2) if they liked it, I get a different response than that. 
When they answer (1) they usually say things like, "Ew, it's written in
haskell..." or "Gosh, I have to try out yet another tool...".  So they tend to
either assume Haskell has terrible performance or they are put off by the idea
of having to learn some new tool (they assume the learning will be painful). 
When they answer (2) it's usually, "It seemed really nice, but I was worried
about performance/maturity."  Of course there alse also the people that love
it.

So from my perspective the myths about haskell and the concern that darcs is not
performance tuned algorithmicly are the biggest concerns that we can tweak.  Of
course there is very little we can do to convince them that learning a new tool
is worth the potential headache other than have testimonials from happy users.

> A very easy and probably effective solution is to re-arrange the home page
> http://darcs.net/ to point *first* to the collection of working binaries, and
> only *secondarily* to the Haskell sources.
>
> (For what it is worth the second most common reason is the hassle of
> configuring darcs and ssh on Windows.  I'm working on that myself.)

Good.  Making these changes can't hurt.  Next we need integration of darcs with
the tools people already use such as Emacs/Eclipse/XCode/MS VS/...  I think
some of them are supported such as eclipse maybe?  How good is that support? 
Does anyone have screenshots they could put on the wiki showing how nice it is
to use darcs in eclipse or emacs?

Thanks,
Jason






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