[darcs-users] [Haskell-cafe] Re: poll: how can we help you contribute to darcs?

[Lele Gaifax]

On Sun, 3 Aug 2008 12:00:22 +0100
Ashley Moran <ashley.moran at patchspace.co.uk> wrote:

> GitHub is responsible for git's popularity.  Git is so popular not  
> because it's the best, but because it has the best Web 2.0 site.

I fail to see what's so cool with GitHub: a quick overview didn't
reveal anything that couldn't be done with, say, Trac+Darcs. Can you
elaborate on that?

Anyway, I think that darcs strongly needs more motivated core
developers, not just surrounding eye-candies... Clearly darcs2 still
has some problems, but despite that without any doubt it *is* the best
for me and for my workflow. After reading the GHC folks rant about
darcs, with their comparison with git and hg, I'm still convinced that
neither of them can be considered "better" (not to mention "best")
tools: they are both lot simpler, less powerful and more difficult
than darcs.

IMHO, the biggest problem with darcs is with its underdocumented (from
the technical point of view) code base, that only an handful of people
understand. As already stated, I doubt Haskell is the real culprit
here: the algorithms are effectively difficult to explain in any
language, English to starts with. I wish David used a less succint
coding style, and could spend some time to enlight and mentor new
developers, but that's the way it is.

just my cents,
ciao, lele.
-- 
nickname: Lele Gaifax    | Quando vivrò di quello che ho pensato ieri
real: Emanuele Gaifas    | comincerò ad aver paura di chi mi copia.
lele at nautilus.homeip.net |                 -- Fortunato Depero, 1929.