[darcs-users] darcs patch: switch Darcs.Patch.FileName to be ByteString.Char8 int...

[Eric Kow]

On Sat, Oct 03, 2009 at 15:38:16 +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:
> > So, this regression is much worse than I had initially realized.  I guess
> > I'll make a new bug ticket for this regression and cite some of this.
> 
> I heard a rumour that this was to prevent you recording a patch that you
> then couldn't work with, i.e. by making the record operation as bloatful
> as apply/amend/whatever.

No.  I remember a conversation with David where he mentioned that Darcs also
has some performance regressions due to special case optimisations being
removed, which is probably for the better anyway (simpler is simpler).

I think that corresponds to his comment http://bugs.darcs.net/msg4077

| Just to clarify here.  We did at one time support lazy operation in record (the
| key was that you had to use --all, or specify 'a' at the beginning of the
| interactive prompt), and it's possible to do so.  However, somewhere along the
| way this feature broke, and I'm just as glad that it did.  I don't like the idea
| of darcs creating patches that it can't hold in memory, as it *very* severely
| limits what you can do with them, and I'd rather our users don't get stuck in a
| situation where darcs has created a patch so big that it can't lift it.

So it wasn't done deliberately, but was a consequence of refactoring and
tidying.  This one of the problems with the Darcs 2 transition: a lot of times,
we sacrificed faster to get cleaner/safer and I think this was one of the cases.

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