From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Martin Langhoff" Subject: Re: Darcs Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:45:57 +1200 Message-ID: <46a038f90706241345m4b5ecb80p9f4ec840993023e0@mail.gmail.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "Bu Bacoo" , git@vger.kernel.org To: "Linus Torvalds" X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Sun Jun 24 22:46:05 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1I2YyD-0006YL-8P for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:46:05 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755097AbXFXUqA (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Jun 2007 16:46:00 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755063AbXFXUqA (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Jun 2007 16:46:00 -0400 Received: from wx-out-0506.google.com ([66.249.82.237]:60213 "EHLO wx-out-0506.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754900AbXFXUp6 (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Jun 2007 16:45:58 -0400 Received: by wx-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id t15so1279679wxc for ; Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:45:57 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=N0puWrQUgwu1ddXJWitY8DgqQFuA5r5ozLw+WRx1PMT44FpZg95mV61ep+yTuS0xCWwTQIYuQkYDCh8PdHZQ7Wm1jdkruFA+8fquZGGoZ8UzJ4mt5awph1706GkeTDFbTKRdyakj9waEU5bdiv0sTTQqjK95lKJVZ15Gbj51iNo= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=gnToqk4kajMKGjplLrpZaSMINWOoruTdTBsqB9aO8Q+uEV4HuJK+Vl40c4xW5o8aOYTEbDcZfRGZ0bwY9EhMtnXFktYs+1/XdMHc1WuURPrcUCDhEl5fIuyWdqKDf+9krbR1CbXgvD5g3aG4nQovfjBHTCxPfQSDA2IaVWhGdmw= Received: by 10.90.91.14 with SMTP id o14mr3682956agb.1182717957716; Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:45:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.90.52.9 with HTTP; Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:45:57 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On 6/25/07, Linus Torvalds wrote: > Ahh, a chance to flame! I will never back down from such a challenge! > > Darcs is .. umm .. ehh.. > > "Academic". OTOH, and from the POV of someone closely following the SCM tools in the last few years (and using almost all of them), darcs was the first usable DSCM in the camp. I am not sure how much of its commandline user interface was borrowed from BK or elsewhere, but darcs was _easy_, where Arch was extremely hard to use. The darcs commandset (init, push, pull) is what git, hg and bzr have today in common. At least _I_ learned about how it could be easy by watching people use Darcs (and feeling very ashamed of my baroque Arch usage). The focus on patch tracking (as opposed to "snapshot" tracking) and the whole patch algebra are two misfires I'd say. Snapshot-tracking DSCMs are winning (faster and fundamentally more reliable), and the patch algebra doesn't quite scale and (as far as I've heard) sometimes ends in unsolvable corner cases. And the closer we get to Darcs UI the happier I feel ;-) cheers, martin