[darcs-users] cheap in-repo local branches (just needs implementation)

[Max Battcher]

On 7/22/2009 17:19, Grant Husbands wrote:
>> Darcs will still have access to:
>> 1) All patches across all branches (that are stored and/or cached locally)
>
> Only superficially correct, as far as I can see. Darcs has access to
> the files, yes. What it doesn't have is an accessible record of which
> file corresponds to which patch+context. (Even if it reads every
> single one, it needs the corresponding inventories to know context for
> each.)

You're right, I'm sorry; I had pre-lunch brain-fart... Darcs 1 could 
determine patch names from just a context (because the file name used to 
be the date+hash of the name), and I don't recall correctly now if darcs 
1 did file fetching... but that is besides the point.

Certainly one possible solution here would be to simply carry over the 
Hash: lines from the darcs-2 inventory format as (optional) hints for 
file paths in context files. Considering the otherwise congruency of the 
context and inventory files I would hope this might be something easy to 
achieve (and would be useful generally), and I'm hoping the reason it 
hasn't been done is simply because it hasn't thought to be done.

In fact, I'm now wondering if it may have been a bug all along that 
hashed/darcs-2 repos don't produce (or at least allow to produce) 
"hashed contexts".

--
--Max Battcher--
http://worldmaker.net