[darcs-users] Re: Where Arch is going

[David Roundy]

On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 10:52:59AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 12:33:54PM -0300, zooko at zooko.com wrote:
> > 
> > The commands like unrecord and amend-record are inevitable consequences of 
> > decentralized revision control.  If the commands did not exist, you could 
> > easily achieve the same effect by creating a second repository with all 
> > patches except the offending patch.  That achieves unrecord.  Then you could 
> > apply the contents of the offending patch with "diff | patch", alter the 
> > contents, and record the newly altered patch.  That achieves amend-record.
> 
> True, but that still doesn't explain their utility... I guess I struggle
> to see why it's easier to do this than to just check in a patch that
> adjusts things to the way they should be, as one would so in most any
> other VC system.

As others have said, it's nice to have a clean history.  A dirty history is
all right when it's just you working on the project, but "never mind"
patches lead to conflicts with other developers.  I agree that if you fix a
bug then realize the bugfix is wrong, probably you shouldn't amend-record
that patch.  But if you add a new feature, but forget to darcs add the
relevant file, it makes perfect sense to amend-record the patch.

I think of darcs more as a means of communication than a means of storing
history, and clean patches make it much easier to read and review changes.
-- 
David Roundy