People/MichaelSchwern

Michael Schwern is, apparently, ambivalent about Darcs.

Compared to CVS, SVN and SVK, Michael particularly likes:

• one step repository creation (darcs init);
• one step repository mirroring (darcs get);
• very easy to send patches back to the maintainer and even get to pick which ones (darcs send); and
• able to take a bunch of changes and commit them as multiple different changes. Handy for when you code up several changes at the same time and then want to pull them apart (darcs record).

Things he hates about it include:

• The darcs annotate format is difficult to read compared to CVS/SVN/SVK style.

• The native patch/diff format is difficult to read compared to diff -u. Not enough distinction between code and meta lines and between files. This goes beyond simply the diff/whatsnew commands and into things like record.

• _darcs gets in the way. Repo meta files should be hidden. Should be .darcs or both allowed.

• The command “darcs changes” should be called “darcs log”, to avoid an unnecessary difference with CVS and Subversion. Why not make an alias?

• unit test takes too damned long. An hour on my iBook! A slow test is a test which doesn’t get run.