[darcs-users] Tips on a large merge, the big "initial import" takes forever

[Matthew Bloch]

I'm trying to start a long-overdue merge of 9 months worth of changes -
an external developer branched some old code into svn, worked on it
quite a lot, and now he's finished I would like to merge it back to my
darcs repo, i.e. in ascii art form:

+ my darcs repo, April 2007
|
+----+ $dev1 copies repository, imports whole lot to svn
|    |
+    +
|    | lots of check-ins on both svn & darcs branches
+    + ...
|    |
+    +
|    |
? <--/ svn rvn 106, Matt converts back to darcs with tailor
|
|

I've used tailor to convert his repo to darcs format, it looks
convincing, the problem concerns that very first patch to the svn
repository.

When I try to "darcs pull" that big import, darcs just chews on CPU for
24hrs (as long as I've left it) and I've no idea when or whether it is
likely to finish.  I presume eventually it would decide there were no
changes to make because our sources will be identical at the same date,
but even if it's the right thing to do, I can't include a "CPU killer"
patch which will freeze up for every single other merge that will need
doing (probably 5 or 6).

What I would like to do really is chuck away revision 1 from the
converted svn repo, and "patch in" the darcs revision from which svn
revision 1 was originally imported.  Then the pull wouldn't have to
consider the giant patch at the start.

What can I do to achieve this merge?

Thanks,

-- 
Matthew