[darcs-users] David's darcs

[Karel Gardas]

Hello Petr,

Petr Rockai wrote:
> Jason Dagit <dagit at codersbase.com> writes:
>> I think we basically agree about the approach to clean things up.  My opinion
>> is that more unit tests, more minispecs, and better source level documentation
>> would improve the situation more than a rewrite would.  We need those artifacts
>> (unit tests, minispecs, documentation) in both scenarios (refactor vs.
>> rewrite).  There is a lot of code that I wanted to refactor more aggressively
>> when I was doing the type witness stuff, but I just didn't know why the code
>> was there or what API it was expected to have versus what it really had.  I
>> know from experience that when I don't understand a bunch of source code and
>> it's hard to read that I usually just want to throw it all away and start
>> over.  But, I also know from experience that refactoring in place until the
>> code is readable again is usually better.  In other words, I'm hesitant to take
>> a bunch of code from Camp or throw away a bunch of stuff.  Incremental
>> refactoring is better in my opinion in this case.
> We'll have to agree to disagree. Incremental refactoring is good, if you have
> working code. But the darcs core is quite buggy and very poorly
> understood.

I think what Jason tries to suggest is to write some more
documentation/mini-spec, core functionality unit-tests just to solve
your "very poorly understood" complain. Also it would be very good if
you come with some proof to your claim "darcs core is quite buggy". As a
darcs user I'm currently quite happy with it on small size projects (<
100MB source tree) but if the core of my favorite DVCS is buggy, then
I'm getting nervous. Do you have any url to darcs bug database which
will add some weight to your claim?

> Moreover, we don't even know if there is a polynomial solution to
> the conflict resolution defined by the (implicit) theory behind darcs-2.

The theory behind darcs is exactly what makes darcs unique. If you
remove the theory you end with just yet another DVCS, nothing more I'm
afraid. Are you suggesting that you are really going to remove just
critical piece of darcs foundation? I hope not.

Thanks,
Karel
-- 
Karel Gardas                  kgardas at objectsecurity.com
ObjectSecurity Ltd.           http://www.objectsecurity.com