On Thursday 08 January 2009, Trent W. Buck wrote:
> Eric Kow <[email protected]> writes:
> > - we /could/ perhaps implement --no-working-directory, which is
> >   conceptually cleaner for push-only repositories, in my opinion
> >   http://bugs.darcs.net/issue431
>
> +1
>
> I've always been too scared to use --no-pristine-tree in case I forgot
> to disable commands, and because the working tree was still there so it
> wasn't obvious that I was looking at a "don't make edits!!" repo.  I
> could disable commands in _darcs/prefs/defaults, but I would probably
> come back in six months and think "which idiot disabled all these
> commands?  I'll enable them again!"
>
> I've experienced hg and bzr "no working copy" repositories before, and
> I think it's more obvious to spot that you shouldn't be making edits in
> them -- because you can't! :-)

There is one use case of a copy without a pristine tree that cannot be 
substituted by a tree without a working copy, which is to offer a 
viewable copy that you do not edit; for example if you have your web 
pages under version control in darcs and a copy of the repository is 
directly viewable on the web. In this case you need the working copy, 
even though you do not make edits in it, but can do without the pristine 
tree which is not needed. However the only reason to not have the 
pristine tree is to save disk space, which frankly is quite cheap and big 
enough nowadays to not worry about using twice the space for a given 
repository, so I do not think that having an option for this is worth, 
especially if is not supported by the darcs-2 format, and if it makes 
everything slower as it has to built a temporary pristine tree on every 
operation.

The --no-working-directory option however sounds more useful and 
conceptually better when it comes to indicate that a repository is read 
only (push only backup copies, or a repository meant only to synchronize 
multiple developers).

-- 
Dan
_______________________________________________
darcs-users mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users

Reply via email to