[darcs-devel] announcing darcs 2.0.0pre1, the first prerelease for darcs 2

[Max Battcher]

On Dec 16, 2007 4:45 PM, Alexander Staubo <alex at purefiction.net> wrote:
> I'm a bit confused about the new repository formats. There's the new
> hashed format, and also the "darcs-2 format"; but I don't see an
> explanation anywhere as to why Darcs 2 needs two new formats or why
> users should not simply go ahead use the "darcs-2" format.

It's in the original announcement as well as the wiki page:

http://wiki.darcs.net/DarcsWiki/DarcsTwo

Here's my 3rd party, possible inaccurate, summary of the differences:

* The hashed repository format is just a change to the way inventories
are stored and so you can still easily move patches between old
non-hashed repositories and new hashed repositories.  I believe you
need someone with Darcs 2 to act as a mediator between the two
repository styles, but it's possible.  It seems that you can convert
your personal working copies of repositories and get some (all?) of
the benefits of hashed repository even if "upstream" repositories
aren't using it, and you can still darcs push and darcs send to the
non-hashed repositories with no worries.

* The Darcs 2 format makes backwards-incompatible changes to the patch
format (specifically the conflicts/mergers bits) and patches generated
in Darcs 2 format can't be handled by Darcs 1 or Darcs 1 repositories
at all.

-- 
--Max Battcher--
http://www.worldmaker.net/