[darcs-devel] status of libdarcs?

[David Roundy]

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 12:50:12AM -0700, Ben Coburn wrote:
> Basically I think "libdarcs" should allow external code to be  
> interposed between any gathering of information and subsequent  
> manipulation of the repository (or export of data). While "one shot"  
> commands that mimic the command line interface should be included,  
> commands that allow for the manipulation of intermediate data are much  
> more useful. There should also be a programmer friendly way to handle  
> interactive commands where answers to each question may changes the  
> other questions. Naturally "libdarcs" would also provide for reading/ 
> parsing, creation, and output of all darcs data structures/formats  
> (i.e. patch files, darcs send -o files, etc).
> 
> Hopefully I've been clear without being to verbose here.

Yes, you've been pretty clear.  This is the sort of libdarcs that I'd be
very suprised to see actually happen, mostly because noone seems interested
in creating it, and those who claim to want it don't seem interested in
working on it.  And it's a very hard problem.  But I might be wrong.

Also in question is whether libdarcs should allow arbitrary programs to
corrupt user's repositories.  The sort of API you ask for would be very
hard to implement in anything approaching a safe manner.  I'm hesitant to
bless an API that virtually guarantees that sooner or later someone's
repository will be corrupted.  But that's just my bias, as the person who
ends up tracking down cases of repository corruption.
-- 
David Roundy
Department of Physics
Oregon State University