[darcs-users] Fwd: Darcs Problems

[James Sleeman]

On 23/02/13 23:28, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> James Sleeman writes:
>
>   > there are times, many many many times, when I want to bring in some
>   > patch from some "branch repo" into some other "branch repo", only to
>   > find that the patch I want depends implicitly on patches I don't want,
>
> "Commit early, commit often, I always say." :-)
>
> Is that a problem for you?  If so, why?  Any suggestions on how to
> make that less an issue?

Large numbers of small patches that form part of a whole don't fit my 
work flow, nor are they very nice in general IMHO (one of amend-record's 
motivations is to allow you to progressively build up a patch so that 
everything is "together", n'est pas).

That aside, ultimately, the problem of undesired implicit dependancies 
remains, which still prevents cherry picking, that or you wind up with 
circular patches bringing in dependancies so you can get a patch, then 
commiting a reversal of one of those dependancies because you don't want 
it, then that reversal patch itself becomes a dependancy on something 
else you're working on, then you want to push that patch you were 
working on back into the original branch but you're stuck with it 
depending on the reversal... doesn't matter how small you make your 
patches, eventually you will run into wanting to pull a patch but not 
wanting something that Darcs says you have to have as well, and at that 
point, you are practically out of options, the user has no clear way to 
resolve it, there is no way to say "hey Darcs, I want that, but not 
that, let me sort out any problems (conflicts) that causes"

Rebase could help to a degree (but I suspect not a particularly 
long-term usable solution), unfortunately it's not available yet.