[darcs-users] reviewing and testing pulls

Kevin Smith yarcs at qualitycode.com
Wed Apr 28 04:46:47 UTC 2004


David Roundy wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 11:17:31PM -0700, Kevin Smith wrote:
>>Also, I want to build and test a "candidate" that includes an external 
>>patch, prior to committing to including that patch in my repo. It seems 
>>like a broken process if I have to put it in my repo first, and then 
>>unpull or unrecord or rollback if I don't like it.
> 
> 
> I'd say that the way to do this is to use a temporary repo, as Tommy and
> Zooko suggest.  Using darcs get on a filesystem supporting hard links gives
> you a temporary repo that costs in disk space only twice the contents of
> the repository, and has the advantage of being a "candidate" in which you
> can use the full power of darcs, recording new patches, unpulling some of
> them, or pulling patches from multiple sources.

Ok. I think I'm convinced. I still have a couple mental hurdles to 
clear, but I think it makes sense.

First, I have already been creating ad-hoc branches here and there. And, 
frankly, it is *very* easy to get lost and forget which ones are 
interesting and which ones are trash. I need to be more disciplined with 
this in general, and especially if using this technique to merge in 
other people's patches.

Second, I guess I'm just have not yet quite fully developed a 
distributed RCS mindset. I want to, and most of the time, I "get it". 
But in this case, it just wasn't clear to me that I actually _wanted_ a 
branch. Now, based on what you said, it does seem that I want to create 
a little branch, play with it, and then fold it into the mainline.

Third, I'm weak at automating my command line environment. At work, I'm 
always in eclipse, which has really excellent CVS integration. At home, 
I just muddle through with minimal automation. For something like this, 
I would want to set up a well-named, carefully-crafted bash script or 
two that would give me this power but in a safe and orderly way.

In other words, I harbor a wish that this could be built into darcs 
itself, but understand why that is unlikely (and perhaps undesirable).

Thanks,

Kevin




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