New feature? (was [darcs-users] Re: Retrieving a specific "version" of a file)

[goran.krampe at bluefish.se]

Hi Tommy and all!

Tommy Pettersson <ptp at lysator.liu.se> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 09:07:18AM +0200, goran.krampe at bluefish.se wrote:
> > 2. A new command - let's call it "patch" just for discussion - that is
> > the "opposite" of record (no, not like unrecord) in the sense that
> > instead of creating patches from existing changes in WORKING (changing
> > PATCHES, but not WORKING) it could create changes in WORKING from
> > existing patches (changing WORKING, but not PATCHES).
> 
> I think this is only useful (but in that case very useful)
> for undoing changes in a way that rollback can't.  It would
> insert in working (and pending) the required changes to undo
> some patches, and the changes can then be refined and recorded
> with a proper name.

Right, but I think it is useful for other things too, I mean, I did show
how it would work for looking at a single file back in time.
 
> For going back in time the suggestion have a significant
> disadvantages (that branching doesn't): you will have this very
> list of unrecorded changes (possibly a huge one), so you can't
> do any real work in this past time state, only look at it.
> Much better to use unpull/pull, in my opinion.

Well, I agree that if you want to go back in time "in full" (for the
whole repo) then that is indeed an aspect of it (tons of changes
appearing). I more view patch as a way of editing WORKING by means of
the existing patches in PATCHES.

The thing in my proposal is that patch takes [FILE or DIRECTORY] as an
argument which means that you can use it to only see how a single file
looked at a specific point in time (for example).

regards, Göran