[darcs-users] Equality dependencies among support packages [was: Something is seriously wrong with Darcs on Windows]

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> These dependencies are a serious pain on MacPorts.
[...]
> I realize that it's a pain for Darcs workers, too, but as long as the
> interfaces of the various packages are going to keep changing,
> wouldn't it be preferable to bundle working versions of these packages
> with Darcs?

It's not actually that the interfaces are changing, but that we are trying 
to reduce confusion about whether a particular version of darcs has a 
certain bug or not. Previously we had lower-bound dependencies, and then 
darcs 2.4.1 might or might not have had a certain bug depending on which 
version of hashed-storage got linked in - and we don't even have a good 
way of displaying what version that was at runtime.

I'm sorry it's causing you pain - obviously this is a trade off and it's 
certainly one we should keep under review. At the moment when we're having 
various difficulties on different platforms, my feeling is that reducing 
this dimension of the problem space is worthwhile overall. Perhaps once 
things are more stable it'll be worth switching back (though of course 
then the cost to you of the fixed dependency will also be lower).

Cheers,

Ganesh