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On Jan 5, 2009, at 4:12 PM, Paul Brannan wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 12:48:09PM +0900, Michael Klishin wrote:
>> Darcs has idea of "every branch is a separate directory" (or used to
>> have it). I can't say it is a problem but you will end up having 3-5
>> copies of the pretty much the same code, and if you repository is 600
>> megs, not all movies you try to  download from iTunes may fit into
>> your HD.
>
> The bigger problem with keeping separate copies of each branch is that
> it forces the user to do a full recompile when a new branch is made  *).
> This discourages short-lived development branches.
>
> Paul
>
>
> (*) at least, this is true when using make -- a build system that uses
> md5sums makes this less of an issue

Darcs still has no concept of branches. I quite like that. It gives a  etter overview on your file system. Every "branch" is still laid out  ike you would have it in SVN or something like that.

I would mark that problem as a problem of you build-system or you  
workflow.

If I want to branch, I usually don't create a new repos as my branch  
and start working there, instead I put the momentary state away in  
another repos and continue working on my active repos. Then, I push  
patches back to the "old repository" or pull patches from somewhere  
else. This ensures that all "temporary data" is still in my active  
"working repository". Sure, it only goes so far until I merge the  
branches changes back into the "old repository", but thats when I  
prefer to do a full check (and eventually rebuild) anyways.

My biggest problem with Darcs is that I have yet to run into the  
dreaded merge problem. It is said not to be rather tame in > 2.0, but  ave yet to experience it. So I can't make an assessment on that.
The Darcs command line interface is one of the best I ever  
experienced. At least when it comes to my workflow, you mileage may  
(and will!) vary.

Regards,
Florian
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