[darcs-users] Evil sources

John Lato jwlato at gmail.com
Wed Sep 21 12:41:05 UTC 2011


> From: David Leuschner <david.leuschner at googlemail.com>
>
> I think Darcs should be changed that it
>
>  1. outputs a message if it tries to access a repository other than
> that given on the command line
>    (this should be true for "local" files, too, because NFS/AFS could
> be down!)

I don't think I'd want to see this in normal operation, but definitely
at higher verbosity.

>
> ?2. has a short timeout independent of the operating system timeout
> (i.e. 4 seconds)

+1

>
>  3. never tries a failed source again

What if the source failed because you're working on a computer with a
flaky wireless connection (obviously I deal with this too
regularly...)?  I think it would be better, and more darcsy, to query
the user with

"I couldn't connect to the repository at url, should I permanently
remove it as a source? (ynN)"

where 'n' means "no, not this time" and 'N' means "no, don't ask again"

> These things definitely need some more thought and discussion. But
> they should not get so much thought that nothing is changed and users
> keep switching.  I don't think backwards-compatibility is a major
> concern: things should change and get better as long as there are
> enough users left to notice.

+1
>
> After having said all that: our company still uses exclusively Darcs
> and all in all we're very happy.  Darcs is great and has only very few
> small annoyances and they're no problem if you know what to do.  We'd
> love to see some improvements, like
>
>  * a record more supporting classifying changes into groups and then
> either record these groups as patches     or reverting them

+1, although I've been able to accomplish pretty much the same goals
by using --ask.

>  * a possibility to re-select the hunks that were selected the last
> time (but then I hit "q" accidentily or the tests didn't succeed)

+1

>  * and of course rebase :-)

I must be about the only person on the planet who doesn't find rebase
useful.  Maybe I push to a public repo too often.

John L.


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