[darcs-users] [1.0.1] darcs dist and tar

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Thomas,

> On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 11:07:00AM +0000, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
> > It's always struck me as wrong that darcs has this ability in the
> > first place.  I store sources under darcs.  I need those plus some
> > extra things to go into the tar.gz, e.g. ./configure.  The makefile
> > generates those extra things and knows about them, it's its job to
> > produce the tar.gz.  Storing generated files, like ./configure,
> > under darcs is wrong.
> >
> > Sprinkle IMHO liberally.  But it seems a wart on darcs' UI.  Can it
> > be axed rather than let it grow with more options?
> 
> Many people don't use the configure toolset

./configure was an example.  Many projects needs to ship files in
tar.gz that aren't under CM control.

> and the files they ship are indeed the files that dist creates.

Only the most trivial projects don't needs to list the various source
files in order to process them, e.g. check their HTML for validity.
True, many projects don't bother.

> (next to that; many packages are shipped without a configure and just
> the .in/.am files)

Only if they're broken since the point of autoconf and its ilk is that
only a developer needs autoconf installed, the recipient of the tarball
doesn't and should be provided with a generated ./configure.

> I really like this feature.

It's ugly.

If darcs had a `list all files under its control' command then it would
be simple to do `tar cf foo.tar $(darcs list-all-files)'.

> Ralph; you might want to build your shipment script to start with a
> 'darcs dist' and then add files like configure with a simple tar
> update command.

Only if I want to create a broken tarball.  Most tarballs are shipped
with a license allowing modification of the source and further
distribution.  Requiring dist and tar to do `make dist', when just tar
normally does, forces any recipient to install darcs.  :-(

Cheers,


Ralph.