[darcs-devel] Any answers for IsiSetup's concerns?

[David Roundy]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2007 at 07:14:17PM -0800, John Meacham wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 12, 2007 at 09:29:06AM -0800, zooko wrote:
> > I know that I personally often want darcs to stop unsetting the "x"  
> > bit.  We could imagine a "permission settings" patch type and patches  
> > which say "set executable" and "set not-executable".  I know you've  
> > already said that this would make sense.  I had thought, until your  
> > recent message, that progress on this front, as well as on the  
> > symlink front, was waiting for darcs-2 patch theory to be sorted out.
> 
> How about a general patch type that can associate various 'flags' with a
> file. patches would simply be "set <flag> on <file>" or "unset
> <flag> on <file>".
> 
> now, flag itself can be an arbitrary string, darcs itself can interpret
> some, such as 'execute' meaning to set the execute bit. but people (or
> the darcs maintainers) will be free to extend the flag mechanism to
> other uses with an appropriate posthook and the patch format need not be
> updated.
> 
> for instance a 'worldwritable' flag could be used without updating darcs
> and a posthook could do the appropriate chmod after pulling.
> 
> The only issue will be namespace collision, but a wiki page and some
> conventions (like prepending local flags with 'x-') should take care of
> it in practice I would think.
> 
> popular flags could eventually be canonized with a defined meaning.
> (such as 'execute').

This sounds elegant, but would require that darcs implement a database of
flags.  Which would be all right if a new developer were to write it, but
seems like a waste of time for an existing developer, since the only
existing use for it (the executable bit) would be much easier to implement
directly.
-- 
David Roundy
Department of Physics
Oregon State University