[darcs-users] ANNOUNCE: darcs 2.4

[Reinier Lamers]

Hi all,

The darcs team is proud to announce the immediate availability of darcs 2.4. 
darcs 2.4 contains many improvements and bugfixes compared to darcs 2.3.1. 
Highlights are the faster operation of record, revert and related commands, 
and the experimental interactive hunk editing. This makes darcs 2.4 the latest 
and greatest in easy version control.

The easiest way to install darcs is using the Haskell Platform [1]. If you 
have installed the Haskell Platform or cabal-install, you can install this 
beta release by doing:

  $ cabal update
  $ cabal install --reinstall darcs

Alternatively, you can download the tarball from 
http://darcs.net/releases/darcs-2.4.tar.gz , and build it by hand as 
explained in the README file.

Interactive hunk editing
------------------------

To try out interactive hunk editing, press 'e' when you are prompted with a 
hunk patch by 'darcs record'. You will then be shown an editor screen in which 
you can edit the state you want to record between the last two ruler lines.

You can find more information about the hunk editing feature on 
http://wiki.darcs.net/HunkEditor .

What's New
----------

A list of important changes since 2.3.1 is as follows:
   * Use fast index-based diffing everywhere (Petr)
   * Interactive patch splitting (Ganesh)
   * An 'optimize --upgrade' option to convert  to hashed format in-place
     (Eric)
   * Hunk matching (Kamil Dworakowski, tat.wright)
   * Progress reporting is no longer deceptive (Roman)
   * A 'remove --recursive' option to remove a directory tree from revision
     control (Roman)
   * 'show files' accepts arguments to show a subset of tracked files (Luca)
   * A '--remote-darcs' flag for pushing to a host where darcs isn't called
     darcs
   * Many miscellaneous Windows improvements (Salvatore, Petr and others)
   * 'darcs send' now mentions the repository name in the email body (Joachim)
   * Handle files with boring names in the repository correctly (Petr)
   * Fix parsing of .authorspellings file (Tomáš)
   * Various sane new command-line option names (Florent)
   * Remove the '--checkpoint' option (Petr)
   * Use external libraries for all UTF-8 handling (Eric, Reinier)
   * Use the Haskell zlib package exclusively for compression (Petr)

A list of issues resolved since 2.3.1:
   *  183: do not sort changes --summary output
   *  223: add --remote-darcs flag to specify name of remote darcs executable
   *  291: provide (basic) interactive patch splitting
   *  540: darcs remove --recursive
   *  835: 'show files' with arguments
   * 1122: get --complete should not offer to create a lazy repository
   * 1216: list Match section in ToC
   * 1224: refuse to convert a repo that's already in darcs-2 format
   * 1300: logfile deleted on unsucessful record
   * 1308: push should warn about unpulled patches before patch-selection
   * 1336: sane error message on --last "" (empty string to numbers parser)
   * 1362: mention repo name in mail send body
   * 1377: getProgname for local darcs instances
   * 1392: use parsec to parse .authorspelling
   * 1424: darcs get wrongly reports "using lazy repository" if you ctrl-c 
           old-fashioned get
   * 1447: different online help for send/apply --cc
   * 1488: fix crash in whatsnew when invoked in non-tracked directory
   * 1548: show contents requires at least one argument
   * 1554: allow opt-out of -threaded (fix ARM builds)
   * 1563: official thank-you page
   * 1578: don't put newlines in the Haskeline prompts
   * 1583: on darcs get, suggest upgrading source repo to hashed
   * 1584: provide optimize --upgrade command
   * 1588: add --skip-conflicts option
   * 1594: define PREPROCHTML in makefile
   * 1620: make amend leave a log file when it should
   * 1636: hunk matching
   * 1643: optimize --upgrade should do optimize
   * 1652: suggest cabal update before cabal install
   * 1659: make restrictBoring take recorded state into account
   * 1677: create correct hashes for empty directories in index
   * 1681: preserve log on amend failure
   * 1709: fix short version of progress reporting
   * 1712: correctly report number of patches to pull
   * 1720: fix cabal haddock problem
   * 1731: fix performance regression in check and repair
   * 1741: fix --list-options when option has multiple names
   * 1749: refuse to remove non-empty directories

Performance
-----------

darcs in its current form does not perform very well on huge repositories. In 
order to systematically address this issue, and to catch performance 
regressions, we have started a darcs benchmarking project. You can find 
benchmarks of darcs performance in many different situations on 
http://wiki.darcs.net/Benchmarks . On http://wiki.darcs.net/Benchmarks/Quasar
you will find graphs of the benchmark results on a Windows Vista machine.

On that page, you will also find instructions on how to run your own darcs 
benchmarks.

Reporting bugs
--------------

If you have an issue with darcs 2.4, you can report it via the web on 
http://bugs.darcs.net/ . You can also report bugs by email to bugs at darcs.net.


Kind Regards,
the darcs release manager,
Reinier Lamers

[1]: You can download the Haskell platform from
     http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/       
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