[xmonad] Upgrading repo formats

[Spencer Janssen]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 10:14:28PM -0400, Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 3:40 PM, adam vogt <vogt.adam at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 1:16 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> While waiting on a slow connection today to darcs get XMC, I had time
> >> to ponder. The patches are (or would be) in my global cache, so it
> >> could go much faster. Why doesn't it? Because xmonad-contrib and
> >> xmonad-core are both still using darcs-1 fomatted repositories.
> >>
> >> Is there any particular reason to not upgrade? Even Debian Stable has
> >> Darcs 2.x (http://packages.debian.org/lenny/darcs), so it's not as if
> >> there are many people who would be unable to do a darcs get.
> >>
> >> --
> >> gwern
> >
> > I support this.
> >
> > Since this isn't something we can easily rollback, (without the messy
> > situation of keeping the unupgraded repository updated in parallel), it
> > is important to have some consensus before updating repo formats.
> 
> What now? Nobody has objected here, and it's been several days, so I
> would guess not many will object in the future.
> 
> I would point out that besides the mere 12 pulls using darcs 1.x this
> month - which could all be due to just 1 user - Xmonad has broken ghc
> 6.6 support, and I wouldn't be surprised if ghc 6.8 support was now
> broken. So anyone actually *using* darcs xmonad-core/xmonad-contrib
> must be using a recent GHC, and there are Darcs 2.xs which support 6.8
> and probably 6.6 as well.
> 
> Which implies that anyone using darcs xmonad is capable of upgrading
> to Darcs 2. We don't to worry about anyone locked down to Darcs 1.x.
> 
> The question is whether we have the will to actually upgrade the repos
> and make people re-'darcs get' the repos.
> 
> I think we do, and that the long-term benefits of cached patches and
> fewer conflicts and active Darcs support and whatnot justify the
> short-term pain. But ultimately, while I could unilaterally upgrade
> xmonad-contrib, dons and sjanssen are the only ones who can upgrade
> xmonad-core, and I'd feel pretty silly doing only half the job.
> 
> -- 
> gwern

I do support switching, but I do have one concern.  As I understand it,
after switching we won't be able to apply any darcs 1 patches to the darcs 2
repo.  We would need to resolve any outstanding forks and clean up all the
pending patches on the mailing list.

Also, is there some documentation or a guide for converting?  I really don't
want to screw up our repository.


Cheers,
SPencer