[darcs-users] Fwd: Towards a conflict-free revision control system.

[Grant Husbands]

Ian Lynagh wrote:
> It sounds like you are conflating "conflict" and "dependency".
> Two patches in parallel may conflict with each other. With two patches
> in series, the later one may depend on the earlier one.

I think I'll interject, here; I think they are very similar. I've
occasionally been bothered by the same thing that Jean-Philippe is
talking about. Sometimes, I (and my colleagues) want to pull/unpull
patches that have dependencies. We'd thought that the nicest and
perhaps simplest way would be to handle the dependencies in the same
manner in which one might handle conflicts.

Essentially, both a conflict and a dependency are
commutations/merges/unmerges than cannot be easily fulfilled (I'm sure
there's a better description). When I have a file with conflicts, I'm
given a file with patch A applied and a file with patch B applied and
I'm expected to provide a file with both applied. When I have
dependencies, I'd like to be given a file with patch A applied and a
file with both applied and be expected to provide a file with only B
applied. In each case, I'm providing a manual completion of the (A, B,
A+B) set. When there are no conflicts/dependencies, Darcs has no
trouble providing any of them.

(When I say patch A, I mean "A or a moral equivalent", in general)

Regards,
Grant Husbands.