Re: [darcs-devel] Darcs and git: plan of action

From: Patrick McFarland <pmcfarland@downeast.net>
Date: Apr 19, 2005, 22:08 UTC
Message-ID: <200504191808.26559.pmcfarland@downeast.net>
In-Reply-To: <4264677A.9090003@qualitycode.com>

On Monday 18 April 2005 10:05 pm, Kevin Smith wrote:

Show 31 quoted lines

> The big feature of a darcs replace patch is that it works forward and
> backward in time. Let me try to come up with an example that can help
> explain it. Hopefully I'll get it right. Let's start with a file like
> this that exists in a project for which both you and I have darcs repos:
>
> cat
> dog
> fish
>
> Now, you change it to:
>
> cat dog
> dog
> fish
>
> while I simultaneously do a replace of "dog" with "plant", resulting in:
>
> cat
> plant
> fish
>
> We merge. The final result in both of our trees is:
>
> cat plant
> plant
> fish
>
> Notice that just by looking at my diffs, you can't tell that I used a
> replace operation. I didn't just replace the instances of "dog" that
> were in my file at that moment. I conceptually replaced all instances,
> including ones that aren't there yet.

I think that's the best explanation of how it works. And that is partially why darcs is so powerful.

-- 
Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || pmcfarland@downeast.net
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd 
all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to
repetitive electronic music." -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989