[darcs-users] "core.worktree" in Darcs?

Ben Franksen benjamin.franksen at bessy.de
Mon Aug 13 18:57:49 UTC 2012


Joshua Tilles wrote:
> I'd been looking for something with which to explore using Darcs, and
> right now I'm trying to set up using Darcs on my dotfiles. I really like
> Eli Barzilay's
> approach<http://www.xxeo.com/archives/2010/02/16/dotfiles-in-git-finally-
did-it.html/comment-page-1#comment-126903>
> to putting his dotfiles under source control, but his description is
> Git-specific.
> 
> A pre-emptive thanks for any help!
> --Josh
> 
> 
> *TLDR;*
> Can I make some repo /foo/bar/_darcs "watch" the directory /foo rather
> than watching /foo/bar?

I don't think so. I may be wrong but I believe darcs only ever knows of 
files 'below' the one that contains the _darcs directory.

The problem in general is this: you want to keep file X that has a fixed 
location in the file system under version control but you do not want 
everything under the parent directory of X to be considered to be 
potentially part of the same repo. This is especially true if the directory 
in question is your home directory. Otherwise if you happen to issue 'darcs 
whatsnew -l' somewhere in your home folder that is not part of some darcs 
repo, you will (after waiting for several minutes) get a HUGE list (all 
files anywhere under you home).

At work I am using the following solution (not for ~/.xyz but in a similar 
situation):

I create a subdirectory e.g. ~/dotfiles, put the repository and all the 
files I want to keep under version control there, and then create symbolic 
links in the home directory to the files in the ~/dotfiles subdirectory.

The creation of all the symbolic links can be automated with a simple shell 
script, e.g.

cd $HOME/dotfiles
foreach f in .*; do ln -s $HOME/dotfiles/$f $HOME/$f; done

(warning: not tested)

Cheers
Ben



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