[darcs-users] Initial impressions of darcs

Martin Pool mbp at sourcefrog.net
Thu Aug 19 06:27:39 UTC 2004


On 18 Aug 2004, Dustin Sallings <dustin at spy.net> wrote:
> 
> On Aug 18, 2004, at 6:16, Kevin Smith wrote:
> 
> >Personally, I view this as the biggest problem with darcs. At a 
> >minimum, I want the SCM to manage the collection of branches (darcs 
> >does not). I really *don't* want a whole new repository for each 
> >branch. After using darcs successfully for several months, I have now 
> >stopped, due primarily[1] to that issue.
> 
> 	I'm still not sure how I feel about this.  I use both darcs and arch 
> (tla).  I think I generally like using darcs more, but arch has a 
> pretty big advantage for me in the separation of project from 
> repository.  It's all about having replicas for me.  Every time I start 
> a darcs project, I have to do some setup to get that project replicated 
> so that each of the four computers I use regularly has a copy.  In 
> arch, I typically put all of my projects in a single ``archive,'' which 
> is already replicated so pretty much done.

If your central machine is a.foo.net, then tla lets you automatically
have a read-only mirror of the A archive on all your laptops.  So you
can start a branch from any project that's stored on A, even when
you're disconnected.

I think you could get close to that by just rsyncing a.foo.net:darcs/
onto each of your laptops each time you're connected.  You now have a
replica that you should treat as read-only.  You can get from that
replica to create branches at will.  I don't see any advantage to
doing read-only replicas in darcs rather than through just copying.

I did something similar recently that made me very happy with darcs: I
got a branch from a backup when the "real" server for that branch was
unreachable.  When it was reachable again, I could push my changes
back.  This didn't leave any permanent record in the history.

> 	In arch, I can choose to have a branch not be automatically 
> replicated, but in darcs, I cannot choose to have a branch be 
> automatically replicated.

I think leaving replication to external tools shows a kind of elegant
simplicity.

-- 
Martin 
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