[darcs-users] Remove directory, pull a patch that re-creates it. Not working

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Asfand Yar Qazi writes:

 > On 16/12/2007, David Roundy <droundy at darcs.net> wrote:
 > > I'm afraid you've got to recreate the directory (and its contents) in a
 > > third patch created in a repository that has both conflicting patches.
 > >
 > > David
 > 
 > Oh well, there goes our plans for sharing code between two
 > similar-but-not-sharing-patch-hierarchy code bases then.
 > 
 > Hope this gets fixed in darcs 2.0!

I don't see what is to be fixed.  Darcs depends on a connected patch
history to do its work.

If you want that kind of thing to work as part of the normal function
of your SCM, use a snapshot-oriented SCM like git.  It will work, I've
done something similar in an ad hoc, one-off way.  But even then
you'll need to manipulate commits using the plumbing rather than the
porcelain, and you'll have to work out a protocol for handling this
kind of patch.

You could also work out the same kind of protocol for Darcs, but you
may be disappointed in the results, since you'll need to actually
apply some sort of reversion patch (which will show up in the history
and may interfere with commutation) to use Darcs functionality to
track the patches of interest.