The idea would be to propose a minimal darcs client written in javascript, to solve the problem of grabbing a basic repository.

Ideally I’d like to see it eventually integrated to hub.darcs.net, something like a “download zip” button.

Questions

• is it better than a server-side generation of tar.gz? after all darcsden uses darcs.

The aim is to make it easy for someone to send a bugfix to a project.

The idea is to have a small and easily maintainable program. Hence, it has to be reduced to the most vital features.

Maybe fancy commands like log (without flags, hence without -v) and whatsnew could be added in a non-initial version.

Roadmap

1. get a working copy (from a local repository or http)
2. get a complete clone of a darcs repository (local or http)
3. log, ie, display the list of patches of the current repo
4. whatsnew, ie, display changes between working copy and pristine
5. revert -a, ie, reset working copy to pristine
6. makebundle, ie, do a record -a and send -O

Bonus points for writing the test scripts alongside with the actual code.

To see

To generate a file on the fly in javascript so that the browser can download it:

1. grab pristine hash
2. generate zip file in javascript in browser
3. create blob/base64 URI
4. pass it to browser to download as single file

Tools to do this:

• https://github.com/eligrey/FileSaver.js
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File