[darcs-users] enfranchising darcs?

[Don Stewart]

daveroundy:
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> wrote:
> > I'd also worry about the investment though: cabal has taken 6 years to
> > write, and is comparable to darcs in size, but the result is a robust
> > package and distribution system used by 1000s of people. How much effort
> > can we hope to sync into franchise?
> 
> I'd say that this indicates that cabal is solving the wrong problem
> for darcs.  Darcs' existing autoconf-based build system took less than
> a few months to write, and is still way ahead of cabal in terms of the
> functionality needed by darcs.  By solving the problem we need a
> solution for, we have a much easier job.  I'd say that if six years of
> work on cabal hasn't made it good enough, it's naive to imagine that
> another year or two will.

franchise could make a great autoconf replacement, and something cabal
could use. cabal makes a great build, dependency and distribution
system.

a nice way forward would be to use franchise as the system/C/library
feature test framework, replacing autoconf, and optionally usable by any
cabal user who doesn't want to use autoconf. darcs could then benefit
from the easy distribution and packaging cabal provides.

does that approach, using franchise precisely as an autoconf drop in for
a surrounding cabalised distribution and build system, sound useful?

darcs has more important battles to fight.

-- Don