[darcs-users] patch name suggestion

David Roundy droundy at abridgegame.org
Mon Jul 21 10:41:35 UTC 2003


On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 09:05:50PM +0300, Aggelos Economopoulos wrote:
> Any chance we could get a graphical browser?

Most definitely.  I have some vague hopes that the wxHaskell library will
be ready by the time I have time myself to work on a graphical browser.
Actually, I'm more interested in a graphical interface to record, revert
and whatsnew so that you can view all the changes at once (and uncheck the
ones you don't want to record in whichever order is intuitive).  Also for
push/pull.

> Since there are no mature haskell GUI libraries, how about providing
> hooks into darcs functions that can be used by other programming
> languages?

Hmmm.  I actually hadn't thought of that, but it isn't a bad idea.  We'd
have to think a bit about what the best interface would be (especially if
we wanted to write a "record" in another language, which I do think would
be feasible--it would just be a lot more demanding on the interface).  For
just browsing the repo a much simpler interface would be needed (which
would also be good to have).

> In the case of the patch browser, I think[1] you could get away with
> writing it in <insert a popular programming language with mature
> toolkits, say C/GTK or C++/Qt or whatever> and just duplicating the
> repository access functions.  Of course this implies you'll have to keep
> them in sync whenever you change the repository format, but I think the
> gains outweigh the extra effort.

I think we'd be better off not duplicating the repository access functions,
since they can be rather tricky--since it requires understanding how all
the patches work.  I think an interface to a darcs library would be much
easier (and better, in the long run).

> Going a step further: if I ever feel[2] like doing the coding, would you 
> consider accepting it in the tree? I've attached a snapshot of a simple[3] 
> browser I've been using for a few weeks, so that you can see what I have in 
> mind.

I'd definitely be willing to accept such a contribution (and I'd be willing
to create a libdarcs which would provide the necesary interface to access
the repo easily.  I haven't ever called haskell code from another language,
but I don't think it'll be a problem, and a C library sounds like a good
idea (in terms of ease of access from various languages).
-- 
David Roundy
http://www.abridgegame.org




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