[darcs-users] Documenting _darcs

[Max Battcher]

I realize that they are still something of a moving target, but I think 
now is about the time that the _darcs file formats (Inventory, Patch 
Hash Names (inventory block to patches/*.gz)) are well documented 
somewhere, perhaps on the Wiki while it remains a moving target (until 
the new repo format?).

I've been thinking about this some because my webhost doesn't seem to 
want to be all that helpful in getting darcs and darcs.cgi working.

I can (and do) have a dumb copy of my repo(s) easily enough, but it 
would still be nice to have something of a pretty webview of what is in 
the repo.  I could write a PHP script that can show quite a bit of 
useful information based just on reading data in _darcs:

* I can generate a changelog from the inventory file.
* I can produce information about the individual patches and link to them.
* I can link to the current/pristine state of the file.

I won't be able to generate from the nice XML versions like the Perl CGI 
can, but it should be easy enough to build a quick parser for the 
inventory file if given a good description of it.  (ie, how do [ or ] 
internal to a patch name work?)

The only real functionality I would have a hard time dealing with is 
Annotate and previous file versions/diff.  I think for a simple web view 
this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

-- 
--Max Battcher--
http://www.worldmaker.net/
The WorldMaker.Network: Support Open/Free Mythoi.  Read the manifesto @ 
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