[darcs-users] darcs counterpart to "svn dump"?

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

>> I think you should be able to just tar up _darcs. To restore, you can
>> either untar it into a new directory and 'darcs get' it, or run
>> 'darcs revert' to regenerate the working files. I'm not completely
>> confident about this, though, so it would be best to wait for
>> confirmation from others before implementing it.

Yes, I can confirm that.

> Yeah, that should work I guess. But I want incremental backups and it
> seems a bit unnecessary to both tar up the pristine tree and the
> patches since the former can be gotten back by applying all the
> latter?

You also need at least _darcs/index and _darcs/indices, which contain
the order in which patches are to be applied.  And you probably also
want to keep _darcs/prefs.

I suggest that you should use a --no-pristine-dir repository:

    Under some circumstances, keeping a whole pristine tree is not
    desirable. This is the case when preparing a repository to back up,
    when publishing a repository on a public web server with limited
    space, or when storing a repository on floppies or small USB keys. In
    such cases, it is possible to use a repository with no pristine tree.

  http://www.darcs.net/manual/node4.html#SECTION00462000000000000000

The alternative (picking just the right bits of _darcs by hand, and
recreating the rest using a combination of darcs repair and homebrew
scripts) is errorprone, and I certainly do not recommend it.

                                        Juliusz