[Haskell-cafe] A small Darcs anomoly

[Andrew Coppin]

>>> This is because of a deliberate choice that was made by David Roundy.
>>> In darcs, you never have multiple branches within a single darcs
>>> repository directory tree.
>>
>> Yes, this seems clear. I'm just wondering whether or not it's the best design choice.
>
> It seems to me to be a considerable insight.

Presumably David thought the same. I won't deny that there is a certain 
simplifying elegance to it.

>> It does mean that you duplicate information. You have [nearly] the same set of patches stored twice,
>
> No, if on the same machine, the patches only appear once, it is just the index that duplicates some information (I think).  In fact just as if it were a branch in another VCS.

1. Conceptually, you have the same information twice.

2. I have no idea how to make Darcs do the thing with "hard links" (is 
that even supported under Windows?) I just copy the whole folder using 
the normal OS file tools.

Either way, you lose the ability to see how branches are related to each 
other, which might be useful in some cases.