[darcs-users] How to you handle content-related dependencies?

[Ganesh Sittampalam]

On 06/06/2011 14:34, Miles Gould wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 1:41 PM, Sittampalam, Ganesh
> <ganesh.sittampalam at credit-suisse.com> wrote:
>> You could also just run a minimal testsuite to infer what the
>> dependencies are, instead of a procedure that's very tailored to the
>> format of your content.
> 
> I don't follow - could you please be more explicit? And what sort of
> testsuite would one write for a TeX project, anyway?

"Does it build".

> If you mean
> 
> 1. Check out new repo
> 2. Pull just-committed patch into new repo
> 3. Pull more patches* until `thesis.dvi` builds without errors
> 4. Add dependencies on all the patches you had to pull
> 
> then it sounds rather slow**. Recording a new patch shouldn't be a "go
> and make a fresh pot of coffee while you're waiting" exercise, IMHO.

I was more thinking of unpulling patches from a clone of the current
repo - I think that would lead to less work to do overall, on the
assumption that you probably do depend on many recent patches. Also,
with amend-record --ask-deps you could potentially do this in the
background, though you might need to be careful about racing with fresh
commits.

> ** I dunno about you, but a clean build of my full thesis from source
> took *ages*. Bloody xypic.

I don't think I'd bother with a clean build; clearly the more work you
do the more accurate the results, though.

Ganesh