Excerpts from trentbuck's message of Sun Aug 16 10:25:13 +0200 2009: > Eric Kow <ko...@darcs.net> writes: > > >> I really do think that the "darcs replace" in its current form is too > >> dangerous to use, because absolutely nothing has the exact lexical > >> structure assumed by it. > > > > The word "dangerous" made me sit up for a moment. Then I realised you > > were using a broader definition of dangerous than I am. My stricter > > sense of 'danger' here means 'uh-oh we have to change the Darcs core' > > which does not appear to be the case here. > > > > Are you at least convinced that darcs replace is safe in the sense that > > it is simple/predictable? > > No. Here's an (untested!) example: suppose a user runs > > darcs replace --token '[^,]' 1000 1024 foo.csv > > they will run into trouble when one day Darcs tries to commute this > against a hunk patch like > > hunk ./foo.csv 1 > +number,description > +512,"Unlike 10,100,1000, this is a power of two." > > Because even in this relatively simple markup format (comma-separated > values), there is escaping which darcs replace CANNOT. As a result, > darcs replace will behave in its unintuitive (but admittedly > well-defined) manner. The resulting file will unexpectedly begin with: > > number,description > 512,"Unlike 10,100,1024, this is a power of two." > > In short, my concern with darcs replace is that it can *appear* to work, > but bite you on the arse years later -- when there are too many > dependent patches to do anything about it.
Years later? Don't you never tag your repository? Moreover commutations generally occurs until patches reaches a main repository on which everyone agree. At this point old patches stops commuting that much. So basically most of commutations occurs when you distribute a 'replace' patch, since in this case you have to commute it with non-pushed and unrecorded changes of others. However semantics patches would be a great thing that I support. Killing 'replace' patches is not necessary. Best regards, -- Nicolas Pouillard http://nicolaspouillard.fr _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list darcs-users@darcs.net http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
