Repository Migration to DARCS

[Brian Rice]

Hi all,

Since there have been no objections, we have proceeded to migrate the 
source repository into a DARCS repository. For now, I want people to 
test their access and report any problems.

The repository is available in read-only form at:
http://slate.tunes.org/repos/

Currently, the only branch available is "main" which we'll treat like 
CVS Head. I'll provide an alpha branch shortly which will be updated 
periodically. This exact same repository is available as 
(user@)tunes.org:/serv/slate/Slate/ with the ability to write to it as 
well. DARCS does this work based on SCP (Secure Copy, it runs over 
SSH); this should be available (included or via online) for all common 
platforms.

Here are some links to get started:
DARCS home page: http://www.darcs.net/
The wiki with several useful pages: 
http://www.scannedinavian.org/DarcsWiki
(see the FAQ, Best Practices, and Hints and Tips)
Binary packages: 
http://www.scannedinavian.org/DarcsWiki/CategoryBinaries
Differences from CVS: 
http://www.scannedinavian.org/DarcsWiki/DifferencesFromCVS

If you want to work on Slate, whether needing to customize something or 
developing a package, I recommend making one branch in a ~/slate/ base 
directory called "main" or something, and making another branch where 
your work is done. That way, reverting to the reference state of the 
sources doesn't involve a remote access issue, and is faster in general 
and works offline; since darcs is distributed, every branch can act as 
a server. Anything else is up to you.

I also still need to set up an email-reception capability so that 
"darcs send" works with the main server, and apparently can be 
automatically processed and committed. I'm still looking into how to 
configure this correctly.

For those using the direct access to the server's repository, there is 
a little recipe using ssh-agent for not having to repeatedly enter your 
ssh password for the server account (since darcs invokes scp repeatedly 
in the course of one action):

user at hostname:~$ eval `ssh-agent`
Agent pid 2393
user at hostname:~$ ssh-add
Enter passphrase for /home/user/.ssh/id_dsa: *********
Identity added: /home/user/.ssh/id_dsa (/home/user/.ssh/id_dsa)
Identity added: /home/user/.ssh/identity (user at hostname)
user at hostname:~$ cd projects/slate/darcs/
user at hostname:~/projects/slate/darcs$ darcs get --verbose 
user at tunes.org:/serv/slate?/Slate/main/

Let me know if there are any issues. I'll follow up with updates.

--
Brian T. Rice
LOGOS Research and Development
http://tunes.org/~water/