[darcs-users] [patch111] Contribute vc-darcs.el for Emacs VC support.

Juliusz Chroboczek Juliusz.Chroboczek at pps.jussieu.fr
Mon Dec 21 10:03:53 UTC 2009


> As you note in your source comments, there is a competing implementation
> by Juliusz.  Why are there two versions?  Is it solely because Juliusz
> (presumably) won't assign copy rights to the FSF?

I sent the papers to the FSF.  I never received a reply.

The process was rather unpleasant (I couldn't just sign a document
saying "I assign all alienable rights to vc-darcs.el to the FSF", as
I can do with e.g. Springer, I had to fill in a form with all sorts of
silly questions).

Shall I go through that again?

[Reordered Trent's questions]

> Does Juliusz' vc-darcs.el includes features that yours doesn't?
> Does your (Dave's) vc-darcs.el include features that Juliusz' doesn't?

First, we use different implementation techniques.  My version parses
Darcs' XML output, and so remains reliable with funky patch names.
Dave's version, on the other hand, appears to do complex regex-munging
over Darcs' human-readable output.

At a quick glance, the functionality differences are the following, in
roughly decreasing order of importance:

 - unless I don't understand Dave's code, my version has a better
 - grokking of Darcs revision numbers;
 - my version uses the Emacs 23 support for Git-style revision-control
   systems, which makes it work better with Darcs; however, this means
   that it doesn't work on older Emacsen;
 - Dave's version has an implementation of a log-browsing mode for
   Darcs, which mine doesn't (it just uses Emacs' generic log-browsing
   mode, which doesn't work very well); the proper solution is of course
   to fix Emacs' generic mode to work with Darcs;
 - my version has much nicer vc-annotate.

> If so, and we can't use Juliusz' work (due to copyright), are you
> prepared to reimplement those features in a novel way (i.e. without
> copying)?

Gosh, no -- as far as I'm concerned, the whole point of Free Software is
that we're free to copy each other's ideas (with proper attribution).
If there's interest, I can try to go through the FSF's bureaucracy again.

                                        Juliusz


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