[darcs-users] A dumb question

[Lele Gaifax]

Ralph Dratman wrote:
> Okay, back to an older complete version sounds good to me. Do you use
> a separate system of automated backups, then? I must confess I stopped
> making frequent backups when I started using darcs, as I supposed it
> could recreate a whole prior version.

By any chance, with "going back to an older version" David meant some 
particular state of the source tree that darcs can easily provide in 
several ways, and not to a separate system of automated backups :-)

Given a darcs repo, you can

a) go back one patch at a time:

    $ darcs unpull
    $ ... do whatever check
    $ eventually repeat

b) go in the other direction, starting at a known good point in the past

    $ darcs get --to-patch "Last good patch" repo inspection_repo
    $ cd inspection_repo
    $ ... do whatever check
    $ darcs pull ../repo
    $ ...

c) going the smarter way :)

    $ darcs trackdown "my smart checker script"

When doing anything like a) (and maybe c) as well) above, be sure to 
operate on a *copy* of your repository, as "unpull" is *destructive* (it 
basically deletes a patch, so you better have it somewhere else).

hth, ciao, lele.