[darcs-users] providing one-time fast-export in darcs

[Eric Kow]

Sounds like a good way to encourage pushing as much functionality as
possible into libraries (to avoid the code duplication).

No suggestions for the UI, except perhaps to rework the darcs convert
command slightly.

Surprised that importing should be harder than exporting.


On 18 December 2013 15:11, Guillaume Hoffmann <guillaumh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to suggest that darcs should provide built-in, one-time
> fast-export output.
>
> Let me explain why we would want this, and why only the export direction:
>
> - narrative for darcs 2.10:  a built-in fast-export feature fits in a
> narrative that presents darcs as a system that people can try knowing
> they are free to switch to another tool without much work. I hope that
> it would lower the resistance to trying it.
>
> - maintainability: every now and then people pop up on IRC asking for
> the code of darcs-bridge, or saying that it does not build. (Granted,
> this happens with low frequency). With darcs providing natively a
> fast-export output we fix this situation for the export direction.
>
> - implementation easiness: we already have a couple of implementations
> ([1], [2]). After all fast-export without marks support is just a
> fancy `darcs log -v`. On the other hand, fast-import is much more
> complex (to begin with, it is not read-only) and still an open
> problem, AFAIK.
>
>
> I'm not sure if the best way to provide this feature would be `darcs
> log --fast-export`, or a new command like `darcs fast-export`. The
> former would convey the idea that the output is for a one-time use
> only, without marks support, with no garantee of being the same if
> history if reordered, etc. But if we want to support incremental
> export, then it gets more complicated that a fancy `darcs log` output,
> and probably deserves a separate command.
>
> I'd be happy with a minimal but working export support, with more
> feature-rich export/import tool being separated from darcs.
>
> Code duplication between seems smelly, but I think we are not talking
> about much code (between 125 lines in Petr's fastconvert [1] which
> would be what we would use, and 600 lines in Owen's darcs-bridge which
> is more complicated [2]).
>
> Opinions?
>
> Guillaume
>
> [1] http://repos.mornfall.net/darcs-fastconvert/Export.hs
> [2] http://hub.darcs.net/owst/darcs-bridge-export-branch/browse/Export.hs
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-- 
Eric Kow <http://erickow.com>