[darcs-users] read-only repositories

[Benjamin Franksen]

A long-time issue I have with darcs is that I cannot use read-only 
repositories, even with commands that -- semantically speaking -- do not 
change the repository, such as 'darcs whatsnew'. 

> darcs whatsnew 
darcs: _darcs/index: opening of '_darcs/index' failed: permission denied 
(Permission denied)

This is rather unfortunate in practical day-to-day usage, and I wonder if 
this could be fixed some day. Interestingly, 'darcs changes' /does/ work, as 
does 'darcs send'. Maybe it is really just a problem with 'darcs whatsnew'. 
I am using 2.8.0, BTW.

I am almost sure the issue has come up before and there is probably an 
ancient entry in the bug tracker somewhere. Anyway, thought I might mention 
it as a sort of reminder.

If you think this belongs to the 'probably easy' category, I might try to 
fix this myself.

Cheers
Ben