[darcs-users] Cheap branches

[Anthony Towns]

On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 10:07:53PM +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
> > > I'm a little bit confused.  Why are you keeping multiple branches in
> > > the same repository?  
> > I'm using "repository" in the CVS sense, as in "a collection of version
> > controlled projects, branches, etc".
> I get that.  I was wondering why you chose to do things that way.

Because that's what I want; I want to be able to store a collection of
version controlled projects/branches/etc in an efficient, append-only
fashion. I want a branch to increase the storage requirements
proportionally to the changes I make, not to the entire size of the
history or the unpacked project.

(Why do I want that? Mostly because if I don't have it, I'll start worrying
about disk space every time I create a new branch, rather than just creating
a new branch whenever I feel I might want one. I like easy branching, and
for me, reducing the worry associated with anything makes it easier.)

> > I don't want a darcs repository per se, because I don't want to keep
> > the unpacked source around.
> Fair enough.  Still, that doesn't explain why you chose a single
> meta-repository for a colleciton of branches instead of a proto-repo-
> sitory per branch.

So, a darcs repository isn't acceptable, because it doesn't meet the storage
requirements.

Having a clear "repository" boundary is important -- that tells you
which patches you're going to share amongst which branches/projects. How
things look under that doesn't matter so much: darcs-repo's just in
"proof of concept" mode, so if there're improvements, it can be changed
completely anyway, and no matter what you do, nothing'll be compatible
with darcs itself anyway.

Working out whether to share the common parts of inventories based on tags
is the next real question, before the repo format can be nailed down. It's
probably a good idea.

After that the only things left I can think of a porting darcs features
into darcs-repo -- the ability to autoversion a repository on a push
by bumping a TAG, the ability to apply patches so that tarballs can be
automatically generated, etc.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
Don't assume I speak for anyone but myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

``[S]exual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.''
      -- US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (http://tinyurl.com/3kwod)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/attachments/20041026/82d7527c/attachment.pgp