[darcs-users] Re: Patches are immutable

Mark Stosberg mark at summersault.com
Mon Oct 25 01:22:59 UTC 2004


On 2004-10-24, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch at pps.jussieu.fr> wrote:
>
> Compound patches: you record ``Implement DWIM.''  Later on, you record
> ``Fix typo in DWIM.''  Then, you make a compound patch called
> ``Implement DWIM.'' that contains the two patches.
>
>|darcs changes|, |darcs annotate| and so on only show you the compound
> patch; so you live with the illusion of one monolithic ``Implement
> DWIM.'' patch.  If, however, at a later time you want to find out how
> you arrived to the polished DWIM implementation, you can always use
>|darcs changes --explode|.
>
> Patch subsumption: you record ``Implement DWIM.''  Later on, you find
> a bug in DWIM, so you fix the bug, and ask darcs to 
>|darcs subsume --patch='Implement DWIM.'|.  Darcs unpulls the old
> patch, and creates a new patch that is marked as subsuming the old
> one.  When you push your repo, the metadata included in the patch
> causes the old ``Implement DWIM.'' patch to be unpulled from the
> target repo.

Of these two options, I find the 'compound patch' solution more
appealing. Unpulling a patch from a remote repo strikes me as a little
too much like rewriting history.  

If other people are using the target repo, they might be confused why a
patch disappeared.

(Although in either case a patch my appear to disappear-- because a
patch that becomes part of a compound patch may not be visible. )
I think I would want compound patches clearly marked as such to reduce
confusion.

	Mark

-- 
http://mark.stosberg.com/ 





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