2005 seems to have been a really good year for open-source SCMs.  Many
new ones have come out and the others are maturing.  I think it's pretty
exciting.  I really need to make the time to try more out.

I personally think Darcs is a *great* SCM and possibly the best approach
to source control.  You know how Ruby makes your programming easier?  I
think Darcs does that for SCMs.  That's probably the best compliment I
can give to an SCM.  I think the ideas behind Darcs is very elegant.

However, Darcs isn't for all files.  It was mentioned before in this
thread that Darcs isn't so hot dealing with really large files.  I also
found that to be true.  I have never found this to be a problem dealing
with source code, but I ran into it when I tried to put all my email in
a Darcs repository.

I think Darcs' niche is for "not huge" repositories, which is probably
99.9% of all Ruby projects.

One of the beautiful things about Darcs is the working directory and
repository are basically one and the same.  Throw a copy on a pen drive
and do your work on computers where you can't access the main
repository.  Resync by simply pushing or pulling the new patches when
you get back.

At work, I'm planning on setting up a system to use both Darcs and
Subversion.  Subversion is the main repository.  I'll be able to run a
command like "rake darcs" within one of the subprojects that will make a
new Darcs repo with that subproject and all of its dependencies.  Then
I'll be able to take that Darcs repository to the lab downstairs (where
I can't reach the Subversion repository) for testing or to a client's
site.  I can make any changes necessary.  When I get back to my main
development computer, I'll be able to run something like "rake
darcs-import" which will take each changeset (patch) and commit it to
the Subversion repository.

I was really surprised to see a couple of remarks by people saying they
might use Darcs if it wasn't written in Haskell.  That seems like
reasoning people have been using in the past concerning Ruby projects.

While most SCMs seem to be slight variations of each other, Darcs is
quite different, taking a step toward greater simplicity.  I hope Darcs
continues to improve, and that future SCMs might take a look at
exploring this "patch theory" further.

Whoops, I seemed to have slipped off into a rant about how cool Darcs
is.  Sorry about that.  To summarize, I think Darcs is a great SCM to
store your ruby files.

Jeff