[darcs-users] About darcs darcs repo as an darcs usage example...

Eric Kow kowey at darcs.net
Wed Mar 11 10:26:06 UTC 2009


Hi Petr,

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 10:13:37 +0100, Petr Rockai wrote:
> every now and then, someone mentions the size of the darcs darcs repo as the
> measure of where darcs scales. I'd like to warn people that before they do
> that, they should mention, that darcs darcs repo is anxiously avoiding any of
> the more troublesome aspects of darcs.

Thanks for keeping us honest.  I'm generally the one who trots out the
darcs darcs repository (because it's the largest working repository that
comes to my mind), but I hadn't considered workflow (or the extent of
conflicts) as a dimension in estimating repository size.

I would be happier if we had more data.  So many dimensions to think
about: number of conflicting patches (conflict resolution), number of
patches total (fetching repositories), number of files in the repository
(also fetching repository, whatsnew, etc), size of files in the
repository.  How can we measure this kind of stuff better?  How can we
work towards a more empirically grounded way of talking about darcs
scalability?

> We should keep our marketing honest.

Absolutely.

My response to Gunther in the newbie confusion email was probably an
example of what *not* to do.  I think my main mistake was sloppiness.
If I had been more rigorous in making sure that I had all sides of the
story covered (for example, workflow as a dimension in repository size,
and our own dogfood woes), and making sure that there could be no
misunderstandings (being more precise what I meant when I said darcs was
"clean") and just not saying anything incorrect (saying that darcs
preserves user intent, when I should have been saying that it preserves
the meaning of the patch), things would be a lot better.

Anyway I hope that this was instructive at the very least.  If we were
ever to grow a Marketing Machine, it would be one that is plain-talking,
rigorous, and absolutely watertight.

Thanks, everyone.

-- 
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9
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