[darcs-users] darcs check

[trb at categorical.net]

Eric Y. Kow writes:
 > On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 14:48:51 -0800, trb at categorical.net wrote:
 > > If a repository passes 'darcs check', does that mean there is nothing wrong with
 > > it ? By "wrong" I mean anything that could cause inconsistency.
 > 
 > Unless I am mistaken, darcs check merely attempts to apply all patches
 > from scratch.  If nothing goes wrong, it is happy.

It seems that way. The question is whether that is enough to guarantee that the
repo will not cause inconsistent behaviour.

 > > To put this another way: if darcs shows inconsistent behaviour on a repo, and
 > > that repo passes 'darcs check', does this mean the problem lies in darcs itself
 > > (rather than the repo) ? Would this be true even if the repo had been manually
 > > tinkered with (prior to passing 'darcs check') in an unwholesome way ?
 > 
 > That does smell like a bug... but I suppose it depends on what you mean
 > by inconsistent.

I mean self-inconsistent (e.g. the behaviour I described in my message about
Issue365, makes a repository invent previously non-existent pending
changes). Suppose a repository had been tampered with in a Byzantine way, but
subsequently passed 'darcs check'. It could well have been modified, and might
no longer be consistent with other repositories, but I would hope that it would
still be self-consistent (by virtue of having passed 'darcs check'). By
self-consistent, I mean that the various source trees it can produce are all
related in the correct way (according to the darcs theory of patches).

BTW, I subscribed to this list before sending my two messages to it, but have
not received any messages from the list, except for a "welcome to the list"
message on 2007-1-4. I only received your message because you CC'ed it to me.
Neither can I follow the discussion (if any) in the list archives, since there
is no archive yet for January.

Tim