[darcs-users] New argument for symlink support

[Jason Dagit]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Henrik Hjelte <henrik at evahjelte.com> wrote:

> At least I have not seen it mentioned at the deferred ticket
> "wishlist: manage symlinks under version control".
> http://bugs.darcs.net/issue820
>
> The absence of symlink-support makes it impossible to migrate a lot of
> repositories to darcs from other revision control systems. Adding a
> script that manages symlinks (like update-symlinks.sh) script is not a
> solution for that.
>
> Or in other words: If you want users, it must be possible to migrate.
>
> Personally I think this is the weakest spot of darcs. A critical
> feature. It can not be an uncommon wish to standardize on one version
> controlling system only, then you need to be able to migrate from
> others to darcs.
>
> Sorry I can not help with implementation, but I just wanted to bring this
> up.
>

In volunteer communities (like darcs) it greatly helps your cause if you can
help!  Please consider contributing to the specification and testing of this
feature even if you have no plans to write Haskell code to implement it.
There are lots of ways to help that don't involve understanding the gory
details of darcs internals.

I read over the linked bug ticket and the linked question on stackoverflow
and I think the description of what git does is perfectly sane.

Can someone workout the rules for commuting symlink patches?  I think
treating them as files which contain a path to where they point is a
reasonable way to model them.  In other words, the first step is to detail
the implementation a bit.  Write down the specification or help us to do so
and may be this request can become a reality.  It doesn't have to be formal,
but it will help if you can describe some corner cases that we can use to
generate test cases from.  Research the tricky spots and troublesome
platforms.

Jason
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