[darcs-users] Reasons to delay upgrading

[Nathan Gray]

On Thu, Nov 06, 2008 at 12:48:42PM -0700, zooko wrote:
> If I may issue a general request: darcs-2 isn't all here yet.  It  
> isn't yet a no-brainer for people to upgrade to darcs-2 from  
> darcs-1.  The main reasons you might want to refrain from upgrading  
> to darcs-2 are:
> 
> 1.  Windows packaging - see this thread:
> 
> http://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/darcs-users/2008-October/015065.html
> 
> It isn't clear which Windows binary people should use.  I recommend  
> the old darcs-2.0.0 binary that I packaged, just because I know that  
> it has worked well enough for some people.
> 
> 2.  Buildbot is not green:
> 
> http://buildbot.darcs.net/waterfall
> 
> Some people think of buildbot as being "just for developers" and not  
> for users, but as speaking a user of a project, if it has a red  
> buildbot (or no buildbot) then this is a warning flag that I should  
> tread carefully and not upgrade unless I have to.  Likewise, if  
> people ask me if they should upgrade their darcs (and people do ask  
> me that), then I currently say "Hm, well, it depends...".  If the  
> buildbot was green I would be a lot more encouraging of upgrading.
> 
> 3.  Current darcs trunk creates darcs-2-format repositories by  
> default.  This can lead to compatibility problems with people who are  
> still using darcs-1.  That is why, for example, Yitzchak Gale in the  
> thread references above will not upgrade to the latest version of darcs.

4.  Assurance that darcs-2 is as fast or faster than darcs-1.

We have some pretty big repositories (750M, 26500 patches), and many
commands are not fast (take longer than a couple seconds).  I cannot
upgrade unless I know it is not going to be slower, since I have a few
people already complaining.

5.  The upgrade path needs to account for multiple copies of a
repository.

We have about fifteen copies of our main repo, holding patches from
various stages of development and deployment (no two copies of the
repo are identical).

> Ideas:
> 
> 1.  Temporarily revert the behavior of creating darcs-2-format  
> repositories by default, until after the next stable release.
> 
> 2.  Make the buildbot green.  Once the buildbot turns green, then it  
> will automatically upload the Windows binary of darcs which passed  
> all unit tests to https://zooko.com/darcsbuildbot/uploads/ 
> zooko_allmydata_virtual2 , so that is the first element of:
> 
> 3.  Automate the production of complete binary packages for many  
> platforms.

4.  Publicly available benchmarking stats for repos before and after
conversion, and a way to easily run benchmarks locally on any darcs
repo, both darcs-1 format (using darcs-1 or darcs-2 executable) and 
darcs-2 format (using darcs-2 executable).

5.  A way to convert a repo based on an already converted repo or set
of repos.

-kolibrie