darcs switchover

[Simon Marlow]

Hi Folks,

As you probably know, there is a mirror of the GHC source tree in a
darcs repository.  (information about accessing the darcs repository is
here: http://cvs.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GhcDarcs).

The aim is to eventually switch over to using darcs for our revision
control.  The point of this message is to find out what constraints
people have that will affect when we can throw the switch.

It doesn't look like we'll be able to keep a CVS mirror going once we
switch to darcs, so darcs will be the only way to get an up-to-date GHC
source tree.

How will it affect you?

 - If you just get the GHC sources from anonymous cvs, then you have to 
   switch to getting sources using darcs.  It's pretty simple.

 - If you are a developer, then you need to: (a) get sources from darcs,
   and (b) use 'darcs push' instead of 'cvs commit'.

 - You won't be able to browse the CVS repository via cvsweb any more.
   You can browse the contents of the darcs repository directly, and we
hope
   to set up some kind of darcs-aware browsing too.

We've switched some of our nightly builds over to using darcs, and it
seems to be working nicely.  darcs get --partial can actually get the
sources quicker than anonymous CVS used to.

Please let me know if the switchover is going to adversely affect your
life, so that we can formulate a plan and timescale for switching over.

Malcolm, Ross - since you both also use the CVS libraries tree, is it
going to be possible for you to switch to using darcs to get the
libraries?  Any idea how long you'll need?

Cheers,
	Simon