[darcs-users] Re: How SVK does revision numbers

Juliusz Chroboczek Juliusz.Chroboczek at pps.jussieu.fr
Mon Apr 4 17:11:15 UTC 2005


Sorry for the late reply, I needed to think about it.

> Yes.  SVK is a distributed version control system and it has simple revision 
> numbers.  They are not globally unique but they sure are useful.

[...]

> In my experience with SVK (I'm a minor developer and it is my primary 
> version control system) I can use revision numbers in SVK for everything I
> can use them in a non-distributed environment with the exception of using
> them as global identifiers.  That is, I can't tell another developer "Hey,
> look at change #1293".

I think that makes sense in the framework of svk, which is a
centralised revision system that grew distributed.  It would be
artificial for Darcs, which is a distributed system from the outset.

In particular, per-repo revision numbers would be very confusing in
the presence of multiple branches in Darcs.  Darcs doesn't have the
notion of branch per se; rather, it leverages its distributed nature
and considers each branch as a separate repo; thus, wich a svk-like
version system versions would be local to a single branch.

So no, I think implementing such a versioning system in Darcs would be
confusing, at least for people who, like me, like to work in multiple
branches at a time.  But I guess there's no way to tell shorf of
implementing it and trying it out (no, I'm not volunteering).

                                        Juliusz




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