[darcs-users] GUI

[Max Battcher]

Michael Conrad wrote:
> There's always the possibility of whipping together some Delphi (or heaven
> forbid, VB) code with an XML reader and just pipe commands to the darcs
> windows executable.  Its not clean, and its not portable, but it would make
> a nice impression on the windows people.  A sufficiently motivated person
> could probably whip up the essentials in a weekend.

I was thinking about the possibility of doing one in my current "home" 
language, C#, which like your VB/Delphi examples I probably could whip 
up most of it in a weekend.  As for portability, the Mono project 
provides more and more .NET portability.  I could try for ultimate 
portability and target GTK# (I'd have to learn it, first, though), or 
hope Mono's cross-platform System.Windows.Forms is coming along far 
enough to support all I would need (I heard its extremely close).

> Also, darcs has a nice enough command line interface that I can't see why a
> person who is familiar with the command line would ever want a GUI for it.
> So maybe a windows-only GUI isn't so bad.

I have to agree...  what little I've played with it (and I haven't had 
as much time as I would have liked) its commands were much kinder than 
is typical.  But some people aren't comfortable/familiar with the 
command line in the windows world any more...

Karel Gardas wrote:
> Is this really something windows users do expect? I would assume that they
> expect something like SCM integration with their favorite IDE.

I think that what has happened is that within the last few years as the 
Command Prompt migrated itself from Programs to Accessories to System 
Tools not as many windows users feel comfortable around the command line 
window anymore.

Those who are loathe to step foot anywhere near the CLI would benefit 
even from just a standalone GUI.  IDE integration would be "icing on the 
cake", for them.

-- 
--Max Battcher--
http://www.worldmaker.net (down)
public-key: /maxbattcher.asc (down)
interim: http://worldmaker.blogspot.com