[darcs-users] [patch39] Refactor Darcs.Commands.Pull (and 1 more)

[Trent W. Buck]

Eric Kow <kowey at darcs.net> writes:

> It seems to share the sort of conceptual integrity that (IMHO) makes
> Darcs so nice to use.  It does add a bit more symmetry too
>
>     get   / put
>     pull  / push
>     fetch / send

I thought apply was the "complement" of send.

> Ganesh pointed out is that we can then explain pull as being fetch +
> apply

hg and git have this distinction, and I really hate it.  It means that
there are, in effect, two kinds of pull operation, and when the combined
fetch-and-apply operation fails, I don't know if I'm supposed to use the
fetch operation and then somehow manually resolve the problem
(conflict?), or if there's something actually wrong with the network.

I routinely throw away my hg repos and re-record the changes against a
fresh clone, because it's too hard to work out what I'm supposed to do
next in order to stop the fetch-and-apply operation bitching at me.

Maybe Darcs can do better, but I'd like to see the use case for fetch.

Hm, I don't suppose you could simply express it as pull --dont-apply or
--no-working-tree, similar to push --no-working-tree (for pushing to a
"dumb" remote host which lacks Darcs)?

> Finally: another option to consider would be to implement darcs plugins:
> http://bugs.darcs.net/issue1504

So then Darcs ends up like firefox, where you can't get anything done
until you install half a dozen of your favourite plugins? :-)