[darcs-users] dvcs article

Gwern Branwen gwern0 at gmail.com
Sun Feb 1 01:48:55 UTC 2009


On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 10:25 PM, Isaac Dupree
<ml at isaac.cedarswampstudios.org> wrote:
> Max Battcher wrote:
>> The only remaining argument is space efficiency ... and if you are
>> worried about working tree space on a desktop/laptop then you probably
>> have other problems to worry about...
>
> GHC working tree is 100s of megabytes.  I make a few branches to hack on a few
> features, it gets into the gigabytes.  Then it comes time to do backups, and
> my backup space *is* rather limited (best current options are a shared backup
> disk, and DVD-Rs).  I have gigabytes of hard-to-compress but highly redundant
> stuff lying around, when the only changes worth backing up should take up an
> amount of *kilobytes*!  As someone who used to hack on things more, I have to
> say I am very relieved not to be carrying around those gigabytes of almost-
> untouched-but-still-worth-backing-up data anymore, one of the greatest weights
> I've felt of living in the open-source world.  (ways in which we drive away
> people who like using low-powered systems.)  I think it's worth some energy to
> mitigate.  (although there's nothing obvious for darcs to do other than
> continuing becoming a well-optimized RCS in patch-interface and code)
>
> I think though, these repos of mine could be archived with context-files and
> darcs-send stuff (and hopefully then be able to reproduce it from the current
> versions of public repos)... if only there was something in the darcs manual
> explaining how to think that way. (maybe there is, I haven't looked for some
> time)
>
> -Isaac

This is of course the obvious question, but - I take it there was some
reason neither that the linking or no-pristine features didn't help
you? (I mean http://darcs.net/manual/node4.html#SECTION00460000000000000000
)

-- 
gwern


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