Re: Google Summer of Code

At Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:31:25 -0400,
James Blackwell wrote:

> Whats needed in this field is research on how to minimise the requirement
> for history and then to delay downloading it until its necessary. There's
> some anecdotal proof in the arch world that one can delay getting
> information in ancestors until you actually need it.

darcs get has a --partial flag:

      --partial   get partial repository using checkpoint

You can create a check point with the 'darcs tag --checkpoint' (and
possibly also 'darcs optimize --checkpoint')

     --checkpoint The --checkpoint option allows the tag be used later
                  with the --partial flag to get or check.  A partial
                  repository only contains patches from after the
                  checkpoint. A partial repository works just like a
                  normal repository, but any command that needs to
                  look at the contents of a missing patch will
                  complain and abort.

If you do a 'darcs get --partial', you can still record (aka, commit)
new patches without downloading the full history.

Obviously, there is a lot more that could be done to automate it --
but it is a neat start.

j.