[darcs-users] New user experiences

[Jamie Webb]

On Fri, Sep 03, 2004 at 11:30:33AM +1000, Martin Pool wrote:
> On  2 Sep 2004, Jamie Webb <j at jmawebb.cjb.net> wrote:
> > I've just today converted two of my projects over from CVS to Darcs,
> > and overall it's looking like a great improvement. The repository ==
> > working directory model seems very flexible. However, I just thought
> > I'd mention a few of the small annoyances I've had:
> > 
> > - 'darcs whatsnew -l' does not distinguish between already added (but
> >   unrecorded) files and files I might want to add. Likewise 'darcs add
> >   --list-options'. I find the 'cvs update' behaviour of marking
> >   unknown files with '?' quite useful.
> 
> "darcs whatsnew" shows you the files that will be added; "darcs
> whatsnew --look" shows you all the files that look like they should be
> added.

I'm quite aware of that. The problem is that unless I fancy writing
both outputs to files and diffing them (a route I may yet take...), I
can't discover the set of files that haven't yet been added, but which
I might want to add (or I might want to mark them as boring), i.e.
those files about which Darcs does not yet have any information.

> It's not the same as CVS or Subversion, which would show them with
> '?', but I think it's reasonably understandable.

Certainly, but less useful.

> > - The manual refers to a ~/.darcs/author file, which seems to have no
> >   effect. Should it instead refer to the --author option, which can go
> >   in ~/.darcs/defaults?
> 
> I think I'd rather it default to $user@$mailname or $user@$hostname.

Irrelevant to my point, but it seems like asking should be the default
if no $(DARCS_)EMAIL or 'author' is available. I think quite a large
proportion of developers do not have a username/hostname that
matches their (preferred) email address.

-- Jamie Webb