[darcs-users] Request: porting patches advice (can I get rid of/ignore dependencies?)

[Kevin Smith]

David Roundy wrote:
> On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 02:08:53PM +1200, Jonathan Wright wrote:
>>Is there a way to extract a bunch of patches from a repository and apply
>>them on an unrelated repository ignoring dependencies?
> 
> You can't do this (as described) without some common history.  If you could
> create a common history (in your conversion from the old VSS), this might
> be possible.

I haven't thought this through all the way, but I'm having trouble 
understanding why a full common history is required. It seems that the 
"context" of a patch is literally a collection of specific patches, 
whereas I would have expected the "context" of a patch to be the 
_result_ of a set of patches.

That is, if I have patches A, B, and C which result in a repo with 
current contents of X; and I have patches D and E that result in a repo 
with current contents of Y; and X == Y (as measured by a recursive 
diff); then why can't I apply patch F to both repos?

More specifically, is this a limitation of patch theory, or is it a 
limitation of the current darcs implementation?

Kevin