[darcs-users] Possible initial checkin enhancements (was: darcs on MS Windows)

Kevin Smith yarcs at qualitycode.com
Mon Dec 8 17:03:14 UTC 2003


David Roundy wrote:
> It seems like what you should do is either simply edit your boring file to
> make it do what you want, 

Ah. Thinking aloud, maybe what I really want is that when you do an 
inittree, darcs would "remind" you which files are going to be boring, 
so a new user would at least have an indication _before_ doing the add 
and record that it might not do what they want.

> It is my goal to have boring match only files that practically everyone
> would regard as boring, so that users who don't use --recursive or
> --look-for-adds (or use them after a make clean or something, so that there
> are no boring files) won't ever have to worry about boring.  Those who do
> use those commands with what they consider "boring" files present, *will*
> need to make sure their boring regexps file matches those "boring" files.

Pretend I just downloaded darcs and want to see whether it will work for 
my project.

I do an inittree, and a recursive add *. Several screens whiz by listing 
boring files that were skipped. Realistically, I don't know whether it 
skipped some files I wanted, nor whether it added some files that I 
didn't want. If I hit record now, there is a pretty good chance I will 
end up with too much or too little checked in.

I might try a whatsnew, but by default it will display every byte of 
every file about to be checked in, so that's not helpful. I can do a 
whatsnew --summary, but by default it won't show me files that were 
skipped. If I add --look-for-adds, it will list the skipped files *and* 
the added files with the same flag of "A", so I don't know which will be 
added and which will not.

To add insult to injury, if I notice that a file was added that I don't 
want to check in, I can't do a remove because it isn't checked in yet.

As I said, I'm not ready to propose concrete solutions. But I do see all 
of this as being problematic for someone evaluating darcs. And it is 
*very* important to make a good first impression.

Kevin




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