> > >The only problems I see is:
> > >- how to 'upload' the patch
>
> It would be nice if 'darcs send' had built-in support for sending to
> HTTP URLs as well as email addresses. As it stands, it shouldn't be
> too hard to script something though: use the -o option to 'send' to
> create a patch bundle, and then POST it to a CGI script using Curl.
> The CGI just has to pipe the patch bundle through to 'darcs apply'.

That sounds plauseable, if I understand it correctly, we can 
programmatically instruct Curl to send the correct POST plus the
file to a CGI script, right? That would surely solve the upload
problem in a very straightforward way.

> > >- how to authenticate the user
>
> Curl (which is also used internally by Darcs) supports both
> password-based and X.509 authentication, which will work with the
> built-in authentication support of the web server.

Hmm, you seem to imply that I would need special webserver support?
What I am hoping for is something more simple like a local file with
users/passwords that can be verified by the CGI script, like the
subversion server has. It doesn't have to be ultra-secure -- it just
has to prevent commits from just anyone most of the time :-) 

> Alternatively, you could require that the patch is signed with a
> recognised GPG key (since both signing and verification are built into
> Darcs), though that would mean that authentication is delayed until
> the patch bundle has already been uploaded.

Ah, and that could be done completely by the CGI script (right?) -- no
extra server support necessary at all. 

This all sounds great (and a reasonable amount of work!). It would be
very secure since it just runs as HTTP, and the CGI is simply limited 
to a few darcs operations -- it can run on anyone's website that can
run CGI scripts -- no server dependencies. Having this would surely help 
darcs to get more widespread. Wow, why has no one done this already? :-)

Is there a web expert who is interested in implementing this? Fame awaits!

Thanks Jamie and Daniel for the suggestions,
-- Daan.

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