[Haskell-cafe] poll: how can we help you contribute to darcs?

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

>>  "I would contribute to darcs if only..."

> The darcs2 announcement strongly suggested that darcs would no longer be
> developed.  This was brought up in the #ghc discussion about whether to
> switch.

I agree strongly with this. I would be much more likely to contribute
if the project seemed active and alive. The darcs 2.0 announcement
read like an obituary, and that put me off. The impression I came away
with (accurate or not), was that the entire program had been
rewritten, I was going to gain incompatibilities, and be using an
untried/tested version which was not going to get any support. The
message also seemed to be threatening me that if I didn't upgrade you
would break into my house and wipe my data - instead of the usual
enticement with cool new features :-)

[Of course, a few emails/blog comments/interactions with Eric has
shown me there is some life in the project - but I think a lot of
people get jumpy when it comes to version control software]

One thing that might help is splitting bits of darcs into libraries.
There have been various things in darcs which are now separate
libraries - ByteString and FilePath both have/had parallels in darcs.
By making a separate library you get a better documented interface, a
cleaner separation of concerns, and people can contribute small
patches to self-contained elements, rather than a big application. You
also provide additional benefits to the general community :-)

Thanks

Neil