[darcs-users] darcs 2 stability, and darcs development future

[zooko]

On Apr 8, 2008, at 12:30 AM, Alex Lance wrote:
>
> I use darcs everyday. It is outstanding. I was just thinking about
> updating to darcs 2, and was wondering if anyone had any good/bad  
> things to
> say about upgrading?

I would say to go for it.  Darcs-2 appears to be less buggy than  
darcs-1, based on personal experience, issue tracking, and automated  
testing, and you can always switch back to darcs-1 as needed  
(assuming you don't go to the darsc-2-repository-format, which is not  
necessary in order to start using darcs-2-executable).


> Also could someone give me an idea of the level of development
> activity? I.e. are there lots of developers actively working on  
> darcs? It
> doesn't sound as if there are. This perception seems to be  
> preventing my
> workplace from committing to darcs as the main VCS. Just FYI.
>
> BTW I stumbled upon this:
> http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-devel/2008-April/007778.html
>
> And (to my eye) it paints a very bleak picture for the future of the
> project. Is the future for darcs bleak? :)

I'm personally not worried about it.  Darcs-2 seems to be good  
enough, and the level of development seems to be sufficient to fix  
important bugs in a reasonable time frame.

My interpretation of that post is "David Roundy is burnt out and  
needs to take a break or cut back on darcs responsibilities.".

Supposing he cuts back to just occasional core hacking, and no longer  
takes responsibility for "project management" and other stuff.  Or  
suppose that he even decides to move to an Old World monastery and  
meditate for the next ten years and contribute nothing to darcs.  
Maybe this would mean that darcs would wither without its main  
contributor.  Or maybe it would mean that it would flourish, as other  
people would decide to jump into the void left by David.

I would actually bet on the latter, since darcs is widely used and  
widely loved, and it is written in a language that many good  
programmers are enthusiastic about.  One of the beauties of open  
source (GPL) projects is that usually don't die off if a lot of good  
programmers love them.  :-)

But even if darcs slows down and finally ceases improvement, it will  
still serve as a good revision control tool for the next several  
years for my purposes, and there will be no trouble in switching away  
from it to another tool later.

Regards,

Zooko