[darcs-users] Re: Darcs API?

[Nils Decker]

Hello,

with the ongoing discussion about the license of the API i wonder if it
is necessary to have a binary API.

Calling the darcs binary from another program for every action would be
expensive and inconvenient for the need to deal with the human-usable
interface to darcs. If darcs had a --slave mode that is designed to be
used from another program, darcs could easily be used from any other
language. The xml output of annotate is a first step in this direction.

Such a slave mode should
 - have a simple formally specified grammar
 - be stable even if the darcs UI changes
 - independent from user preferences to be predictable for the calling
   program

For the license of darcs this means that any commercial or free program
could include and use darcs. Darcs itself would be visible a a seperate
process. It would not be possible to make incompatible changes to darcs,
because the darcs binary itself is still GPL.

Regards,
  Nils Decker

Am Samstag, den 16.04.2005, 07:12 -0400 schrieb David Roundy:
> The easiest thing would be to call the darcs binary, but...
> 
> I'm quite interested in having a darcs API, but there really isn't one at
> the moment.  Someone (I've forgotten who) was working for a bit at creating
> a libdarcs package, but it never got finished.