[darcs-users] Feedback on hunk splitting with Darcs 2.4 beta 1

[Isaac Dupree]

Mark Stosberg wrote:
> Here's a proposed "screenshot" how I think it could work more intuitively:
> 
> #####
> Interactive hunk splitting:
>     - move the ==SPLIT line to the location where you would like the hunk to be split
>     - Otherwise changing the content is not supported. 
> ==BEGIN
> ==SPLIT
>         use Data::Dumper;
>         warn Dumper ('you!');
> ==END
> ######

I agree, I would expect something like that (and one could add multiple 
"SPLIT" lines to split it into three or more pieces.  I am (as a naive 
darcs user) confident that darcs can support this interface because it 
is exactly the effect I gain from manually and temporarily reverting 
some lines of the file that are adjacent to other modified ones, 
darcs-recording, and then putting those changes back and recording 
again.  It's always seemed a little odd that 'record' forces grouping 
adjacent lines together, but not when there happens to be one unchanged 
line in between them. (Well, since there is a diffing algorithm, I'm 
sure weird situations are possible that might still require file 
modification before-and-after hacks.)

70% of the time that I'm unsatisfied with pre-hunk-splitting darcs 
recording, the above simple interface is the answer I want.  There are 
other kinds of splitting that I'd like sometimes, but I'd rather we 
deliberately *not* combine them with this particular simple kind of 
line-splitting.  Perhaps, as Mark suggests, two separate "let me split 
this" commands inside darcs-record might be in order (or, at least two 
commands..I don't have a mental model yet for what other 
patch-modification I tend to want to do.).

-Isaac