The general format of a darcs command is
% darcs COMMAND OPTIONS ARGUMENTS ...Here COMMAND is a command such as add or record, which of course may have one or more arguments. Options have the form
--option or -o, while arguments vary from command to
command. There are many options which are common to a number of different
commands, which will be summarized here.
If you wish, you may use any unambiguous beginning of a command name as a
shortcut: for darcs record, you could type darcs recor or
darcs rec, but not darcs re since that could be confused with
darcs replace, darcs revert and darcs remove.
--help as an argument, which tells it to
provide a bit of help. Among other things, this help always provides an
accurate listing of the options available with that command, and is
guaranteed never to be out of sync with the version of darcs you actually
have installed (unlike this manual, which could be for an entirely
different version of darcs).
% darcs COMMAND --help
--verbose option, which tells darcs to
provide additional output. The amount of verbosity varies from command to
command.
--repodir option, which allows you to
specify the directory of the repository in which to perform the command.
This option is used with commands, such as whatsnew, that ordinarily would
be performed within a repository directory, and allows you to use those
commands without actually being in the repo directory when calling the
command. This is useful when running darcs as a pipe, as might be the case
when running apply from a mailer.
whatsnew and record which would otherwise require reading
every file in the repo and comparing it with a reference version. However,
there are times when this can cause problems, such as when running a series
of darcs commands from a script, in which case often a file will be
modified twice in the same second, which can lead to the second
modification going unnoticed. The solution to such predicaments is the
--ignore-times option, which instructs darcs not to trust the file
modification times, but instead to check each file's contents explicitely.
EMAIL or DARCS_EMAIL (with
the latter overriding the former). You can also override this using the
--author flag to any command. Alternatively, you could set your
email address on a per-repository basis using the ``defaults'' mechanism
for ``ALL'' commands, as described in Appendix B.
Or, you could specify the author on a per-repository basis using the
_darcs/prefs/author file as described in section B.1.3.
--dont-compress option, which causes darcs not to compress the patch
file.
--gui flag.
To resolve conflicts using an external tool, you need to specify a command to use via somthing like
--use-external-merge-tool 'opendiff %1 %2 -ancestor %a -merge %o'.The
%1 and %2 are replaced with the two versions to be
merged, %a is replaced with the common ancestor of the two version.
Most importantly, %o is replaced with the name of the output file
that darcs will require to be created holding the merged version. The
above example works with the FileMerge.app tool that comes with Apple's
developer tools. To use xxdiff, you would use
--use-external-merge-tool 'xxdiff -m -O -M %o %1 %a %2'.If you figure out how to use darcs with another merge tool (meld comes to mind), please let me know what flags you used so I can mention it here.
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
Initialize a new source tree as a darcs repository.
Generally you will only call inittree once for each project you work on, and calling it is just about the first thing you do. Just make sure you are in the main directory of the project, and inittree will set up all the directories and files darcs needs in order to start keeping track of revisions for your project.
inittree actually follows a very simple procedure. It simply creates the directories _darcs, _darcs/current and _darcs/patches, and then creates an empty file, _darcs/inventory. However, it is strongly recommended that you use darcs inittree to do this, as this procedure may change in a future version of darcs.
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--boring |
don't skip boring files | |
--case-ok |
don't refuse to add files differing only in case | |
-r |
--recursive |
add contents of subdirectories |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Add needs to be called whenever you add a new file or directory to your project. Of course, it also needs to be called when you first create the project, to let darcs know which files should be kept track of.
Darcs will refuse to add a file or directory that differs from an existing one only in case. This is because the HFS+ file system used on under MacOS treats such files as being one and the same.
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Remove should be called when you want to remove a file from your project, but don't actually want to delete the file. Otherwise just delete the file or directory, and darcs will notice that it has been removed.
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--summary |
summarize changes | |
--ignore-times |
don't trust the file modification times | |
--look-for-adds |
Add any new files or directories in the working dir | |
--boring |
don't skip boring files | |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Display unrecorded changes in the working directory.
What's-new gives you a view of what changes you've made in your working directory that haven't yet been recorded. The changes are displayed in darcs patch format. Darcs whatsnew will return a non-zero value if there are no changes, which can be useful if you just want to see in a script if anything has been modified. FIXME: If I feel motivated, I may create options for different (possibly more user-friendly) views, such as a unidiff view.
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--no-test |
don't run the test script |
Check the repository for consistency.
Check verifies that the patches stored in the repository, when successively applied to an empty tree, properly recreate the stored current tree.
If you like, you can configure your repository to be able to run a test suite of some sort. There are two ways you can do this. One is to use ``setpref'' to set the ``test'' value to be a command to run. e.g.
% darcs setpref test "sh configure && make && make test"
Alternatively, you can add to your repo a file called darcs_test.
Darcs will recognize this, and make it executable and run it as a test
script. Typically you would make darcs_test a simple script that
compiles your project and possibly runs a test suite. You should make sure
that your darcs_test returns an error code indicating either success
or failure so darcs will know whether or not the code worked.
If you just want to check the consistency of your repository without
running the test, you can call darcs check with the --no-test
option.
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
-A |
--author EMAIL |
specify author id |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--no-test |
don't run the test script | |
-a |
--all |
answer yes to all patches |
--dont-compress |
don't create compressed patches | |
--ask-deps |
ask about dependencies | |
--ignore-times |
don't trust the file modification times | |
--look-for-adds |
Add any new files or directories in the working dir | |
--pipe |
Expect to receive input from a pipe | |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Record is used to name a set of changes and record the patch to the
repository.
Each patch is given a name, which typically would consist of a brief
description of the changes. This name is later used to describe the patch.
The name must fit on one line (i.e. cannot have any embedded newlines). If
you have more to say, stick it in the log.
The patch is also flagged with the author of the change, taken by default
from the DARCS_EMAIL environment variable, and if that doesn't
exist, from the EMAIL environment variable. The date on which the
patch was recorded is also included. Currently there is no provision for
keeping track of when a patch enters a given repository.
Finally, each changeset should have a full log (which may be empty). This
log is for detailed notes which are too lengthy to fit in the name. If you
answer that you do want to create a comment file, darcs will open an editor
so that you can enter the comment in. The choice of editor proceeds as
follows. If one of the $DARCSEDITOR, $VISUAL or
$EDITOR environment variables is defined, its value is used (with
precedence proceeding in the order listed). If not, ``vi'', ``emacs'',
``emacs -nw'' and ``nano'' are tried in that order.
Each patch may depend on any number of previous patches. If you choose to make your patch depend on a previous patch, that patch is required to be applied before your patch can be applied to a repo. This can be used, for example, if a piece of code requires that a function be defined, which has was defined in an earlier patch.
If you want to manually define any dependencies for your patch, you can use
the --ask-deps flag, and darcs will ask you for the patch's
dependencies.
If you configure darcs to run a test suite, darcs will run this test on the
recorded repo to make sure it is valid. Darcs first creates a pristine
copy of the source tree (in /tmp), then it runs the test, using its
return value to decide if the record is valid. If it is not valid, the
record will be aborted. This is a handy way to avoid making stupid
mistakes like forgetting to `darcs add' a new file. It also can be
tediously slow, so there is an option (--no-test) to skip the test.
--repo-name REPONAME |
name of output repository | |
-t |
--tag-name TAGNAME |
name of version to pull |
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
--partial |
get partial repository using checkpoint | |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
Get is used to get a local copy of a repository.
I recommend using the --verbose flag to get, as
this command can take a while, and with no feedback, that can be rather
boring.
If the remote repo and the current directory are in the same filesystem and
that filesystem supports hard links, get will create hard links for the
patch files, which means that the additional storage space needed will be
minimal. This is very good for your disk usage (and for the speed
of running get), so if you want multiple copies of a repository, I strongly
recommend first running darcs get to get yourself one copy, and then
running darcs get on that copy to make any more you like. The only
catch is that the first time you run darcs push or darcs pull
from any of these copies, by default they will access the first
copy--which may not be what you want.
If you want to get a specific version of a repository, you have a couple of
options. The first is to use the --tag-name option, which allows
you to specify a specific version of the repository by its tag, and get
precisely that version. The argument is a regular expression, and get will
grab the most recent tag which matches that regular expression. The other
option is the --patch-name option, which will allow you to get that
patch (i.e. the most recent one matching the specified regular expression)
and all older patches. Note that when specifying a --patch-name,
you may get a version of your code that has never before been seen, if the
patches have gotten themselves reordered. If you ever want to be able to
precisely reproduce a given version, you need to tag it.
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
-t |
--tag-name TAGNAME |
name of version to pull |
-a |
--all |
answer yes to all patches |
--use-external-merge-tool COMMAND |
Use external tool to merge conflicts | |
--dont-compress |
don't create compressed patches | |
--ignore-times |
don't trust the file modification times | |
--no-deps |
don't automatically fulfill dependencies |
Pull is used to bring changes made in another repo into the current repo (that is, the one that is the current directory). Pull allows you to bring over all or some of the patches that are in that repo but not in the current one. Pull accepts an argument, which is the URL from which to pull, and when called without an argument, pull will use the repository from which you have most recently either pushed or pulled.
You can use an external interactive merge tool to resolve conflicts via the
flag --use-external-merge-tool. For more details see
section 4.1.
The --patch-name argument can be used to specify a regexp, which
should be of the extended type used by egrep. If this option is
used, only patches which match this regexp (along with their dependencies)
are considered. Similarly, --tag-name can be used along with a
regexp to pull all patches which are in versions with a matching tag.
If you give a --patch-name argument, darcs will silently pull along
any other patches upon which the patches which match the patch-name depend.
So --patch-name bugfix mean ``pull all the patches with `bugfix' in
their name, along with any patches they require.'' If you really only want
the patches with `bugfix' in their name, you should use the
--no-deps option, which is only useful in combination with
--patch-name, and makes darcs only pull in those matching patches
which have no dependencies (apart from other matching patches).
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
-a |
--all |
answer yes to all patches |
-A |
--author EMAIL |
specify author id |
-T |
--to EMAIL |
specify destination email |
-c |
--cc EMAIL |
specify email address to cc |
-o |
--output FILE |
specify output filename |
-s |
--sign |
sign the patch with your gpg key |
--and-apply |
after pushing, apply patch either using ssh or locally | |
--and-apply-as USERNAME |
after pushing locally, apply patch using sudo as another user | |
--edit-description |
edit the patch bundle description | |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Push is used to prepare a bundle of patches to send to another repository. Push accepts the URL of the repository as an argument, and when called without an argument, pull will use the most recent repository that was either pushed to or pulled from.
The --output and --email flags determine what darcs does with
the patch bundle after creating it. If you provide an --output
argument, the patch bundle is saved to that file. If you give one or more
--to arguments, the bundle of patches is emailed to those addresses.
If you don't provide either, darcs will prompt you for an email recipient.
However, if the repository you are pushing to is configure to receive
pushes (this consists of having a file named _darcs/prefs/email
containing the address for pushes), then you can leave out the --to,
and darcs will push to the repo's email address. The --cc option
allows you to specify additional recipients without overriding the default
repository email address.
The --patchname argument can be used to specify a regexp, which
should be of the extended type used by egrep. If this option is
used, only patches which match this regexp (along with their dependencies)
are considered for pushing.
If you want to include a description or explanation along with the bundle
of patches, you need to specify the --edit-description flag, which
will cause darcs to open up an editor with which you can compose an email
to go along with your patches.
-V |
--verify PUBRING |
verify that the patch was signed by a key in PUBRING |
--reply FROM |
send email response | |
-c |
--cc EMAIL |
specify email address to cc |
--use-external-merge-tool COMMAND |
Use external tool to merge conflicts | |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--ignore-times |
don't trust the file modification times | |
--dont-compress |
don't create compressed patches | |
--no-resolve-conflicts |
don't try to resolve conflicts | |
--test |
run the test script | |
--no-test |
don't run the test script | |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Apply is used to apply a bundle of patches to this repository. Such a bundle may be created using push.
Darcs apply accepts a single argument, which is the name of the patch file to be applied. If you omit this argument, the patch is read from standard input.4.1 This allows you to use apply with a pipe from your email program, for example.
If you specify the --verify PUBRING option, darcs will check that
the patch was gpg-signed by a key which is in PUBRING, and will
refuse to apply the patch otherwise.
If you give the --reply FROM option to darcs apply, it will send the
results of the application to the sender of the patch. This only works if
the patch is in the form of an email with its headers intact, so that darcs
can actually know the origin of the patch. The reply email will indicate
whether or not the patch was successfully applied. The FROM flag is
the email address that will be used as the ``from'' address when replying.
If the darcs apply is being done automatically, it is important that this
address not be the same as the address at which the patch was received in
order to avoid automatic email loops.
If you want to also send the apply email to another address (for example,
to create something like a ``commits'' mailing list), you can use the
--cc option to specify additional recipients.
The --reply feature of apply is intended primarily for two uses.
When used by itself, it is handy for when you want to apply patches sent to
you by other developers so that they will know when their patch has been
applied. For example, in my .muttrc (the config file for my mailer)
I have:
macro pager A "<pipe-entry>darcs apply --verbose \
--reply droundy@abridgegame.org --repodir ~/darcs
which allows me to apply a patch to darcs directly from my mailer, with the
originator of that patch being sent a confirmation when the patch is
successfully applied. NOTE: For some reason mutt seems to set the umask
such that patches created with the above macro are not world-readable. I'm
not sure why this is, but use it with care.
You can use an external interactive merge tool to resolve conflicts via the
flag --use-external-merge-tool. For more details see
section 4.1.
When used in combination with the --verify option, the
--reply option allows for a nice pushable repository. When these
two options are used together, any patches that don't pass the verify will
be forwarded to the FROM address of the --reply option. This
allows you to set up a repository so that anyone who is authorized can push
to it and have it automatically applied, but if a stranger pushes to it,
the patch will be forwarded to you. Please (for your own sake!) be certain
that the --reply FROM address is different from the one used to send
patches to a pushable repository, since otherwise an unsigned patch will be
forwarded to the repository in an infinite loop.
If you use `darcs apply --verify PUBRING --reply' to create a
pushable repo by applying patches automatically as they are recieved via
email, you will also want to use the --no-resolve-conflicts option,
which will keep the local and recorded versions in sync on the repo.
If you specify the --test option, apply will run the test (if a test
exists) prior to applying the patch. If the test fails, the patch is not
applied. In this case, if the --reply option was used, the results
of the test are send in the reply email. You can also specify the
--no-test option, which will override the --test option, and
prevent the test from being run. This is helpful when setting up a
pushable repository, to keep users from running code.
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
-t |
--tag-name TAGNAME |
name of version to pull |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--dont-compress |
don't create compressed patches | |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Unrecord is used to undo a single recorded patch. It will prompt you
for which patch to unrecord, and then will undo that patch.
Unrecord actually removes the unrecorded patch from
your repository, so there is no way to ``rerecord'' an unrecorded
patch4.2. Note that unrecord doesn't
affect your working copy of the tree at all, so if you want to completely
undo the change, you'll also need to darcs revert, or do an unpull.
If you don't revert after unrecording, then the changes made by the unrecorded patches are left in your working tree. If these patches are actually from another repository, interaction (either pushes or pulls) with that repository may be massively slowed down, as darcs tries to cope with the fact that you appear to have made a large number of changes that conflict with those present on the other repository. So if you really want to undo the result of a pull operation, use unpull! Unrecord is primarily intended for when you record a patch, realize it needs just one more change, but would rather not have a separate patch for just that one change.
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
-t |
--tag-name TAGNAME |
name of version to pull |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--dont-compress |
don't create compressed patches | |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Unpull is used to undo a single patch that has been pulled from another repository. It will prompt you for which patch to unpull, and then will undo that patch. Beware that unpull undoes the patch both from the repo records AND from the current working directory, and does NOT check that the patch originated with a pull. In otherwords, you could lose precious code by unpulling! Like unrecord, unpull does not just apply an inverse patch to the repository, it actually deletes the patch from the repository. This makes unpull a particularly dangerous command, as it not only deletes the patch from the repo, but also removes the changes from the working directory. It is equivalent to an unrecord followed by a revert, except that revert can be unreverted...4.3
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--ignore-times |
don't trust the file modification times | |
-a |
--all |
answer yes to all patches |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Revert is used to undo changes make to the local tree which have not yet been recorded. You will be prompted for which changes you wish to undo. The actions of a revert may be reversed using the unrevert command (see section 4.15). However, if you've made changes since the revert your mileage may vary, so please be careful.
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--ignore-times |
don't trust the file modification times | |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Unrevert is used to undo the results of a revert command.
While this is only guaranteed to work properly if you haven't made any changes since the revert was performed, it makes a best effort to merge the unreversion with any changes you have since made. In fact, unrevert should even work if you've recorded changes since reverting.
-d |
--dist-name DISTNAME |
name of version |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
Create a distribution tarball.
Dist is a handy tool for implementing a ``make dist'' target in your makefile. It creates a tarball of the recorded edition of your tree. Basically, you will typically use it via a makefile rule such as
dist:
./darcs dist --dist-name darcs-`./darcs --version`
darcs dist then simply creates a clean copy of the source tree,
which it then tars and gzips. If you use programs such as autoconf or
automake, you really should run them on the clean tree before tarring it up
and distributing it. You can do this using the pref value ``predist'',
which is a shell command that is run prior to tarring up the distribution:
% darcs setpref predist "autoconf && automake"
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Darcs mv needs to be called whenever you want to rename or move a file or directory. Unlike remove, mv actually performs the move itself in your working directory. This is why ``mv'' isn't called ``move'', since it is really almost equivalent to the unix command ``mv''. I could add an equivalent command named ``move'' for those who like vowels.
--token-chars "[CHARS]" |
define token to contain these characters | |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
Replace allows you to change a specified token whereever it occurs in the specified files. Tokens here are defined by a regexp specifying the characters which are allowed. By default a token corresponds to a C identifier.
The default regexp is [A-Za-z_0-9]), and if one of your tokens
contains a `-' or `.', you will then (by default) get the ``filename''
regexp, which is [A-Za-z_0-9\-\.]. If you prefer to choose a
different set of characters to define your token (perhaps because you are
programming in some other language), you may do so with the
--token-chars option.
If you do choose a non-default token definition, I recommend using
_darcs/prefs/defaults to always specify the same
--token-chars, since your replace patches will be better behaved (in
terms of commutation and merges) if they have tokens defined in the same
way.
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
-A |
--author EMAIL |
specify author id |
--checkpoint |
create a checkpoint file | |
--pipe |
Expect to receive input from a pipe | |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
Tag is used to name a version of the tree. Tag differs from record in that it doesn't record any new changes, and it always depends on all patches residing in the repository when it is tagged. This means that one can later reproduce this version of the repository by calling, for example:
% darcs get --tag-name "darcs 3.14" REPOLOCATION
Each tagged version has a version name. The version is also flagged with the person who tagged it (taken by default from the `DARCS_EMAIL' or `EMAIL' environment variable. The date is also included in the version information.
A tagged version automatically depends on all patches in the repo. This allows you to later reproduce precisely that version. The tag does this by depending on all patches in the repo, except for those which are depended upon by other tags already in the repo. In the common case of a sequential series of tags, this means that the tag depends on all patches since the last tag, plut that tag itself.
-t |
--tag-name TAGNAME |
name of version to pull |
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
--machine-readable |
give machine-readable output |
Changes gives a human-readable list of changes between versions suitable for use as a changelog.
-t |
--tag-name TAGNAME |
name of version to pull |
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
name of patch |
--repodir DIRECTORY |
specify the repository directory in which to run |
Diff can be used to create a diff between two versions which are in your repository. Specifying just one version will get you a diff against the version in your working directory. If you give diff no version arguments, it gives you the same information as whatsnew except that the patch is formatted as the output of a diff command.
Diff calls an external ``diff'' command to do the actual work, and passes any unrecognized flags to this diff command. Thus you can call
% darcs diff -t 0.9.8 -t 0.9.10 -- -uto get a diff in the unified format. Actually, thanks to the wonders of getopt you need the ``
--'' shown above before any arguments to diff.
FIXME: I probably should just bite the bullet and figure out how to get
diff flags passed through properly. Any hints from getopt gurus would be
appreciated.
FIXME: I should allow the user to specify the external diff command. Currently it is hardwired to /usr/bin/diff.
Usage example:
% darcs setpref test "echo I am not really testing anything."
Setpref allows you to set a preferences value in a way
that will propogate to other repositories.
If you just want to set the pref value in your
repository only, you can just edit ``_darcs/prefs/prefs''. Changes
you make in that file will be preserved.
The ``_darcs/prefs/prefs'' holds the only preferences information
that can propogate between repositories via pushes and pulls, and the only
way this happens is when the setprefs command is used. Note that although
prefs settings are included in patches, they are not fully version
controlled. In particular, depending on the order in which a series of
merges is perform, you may end up with a different final prefs
configuration. In practice I don't expect this to be a problem, as the
prefs usually won't be changed very often.
The following values are valid preferences options which can be configured using setpref:
sh ./darcs_test''.
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
Trackdown tries to find the most recent version in the repository which passes a test. When given no options, trackdown tries to find the latest version that passes the test (i.e. the test that is run under 'darcs record'). If you give it a single argument, it is interpereted as a shell command to be run as a test. If you give it two
Trackdown is helpful for locating when something was broken. FIXME: It is still rather primitive. Currently it just goes back over the history in reverse order trying each version. I'd like for it to explore different patch combinations, to try to find the minimum number of patches that you would need to unpull in order to make the test succeed.
FIXME: I also would like to add an interface by which you can tell it which patches it should consider not including. Without such a feature, the following command:
% darcs trackdown 'make && false'would result in compiling every version in the repository-which is a rather tedious prospect.
% darcs trackdown 'grep FIXME Record.lhs'
To find the latest version that compiles, you can run
% darcs trackdown 'autoconf' './configure && make'
--checkpoint |
create a checkpoint file | |
-t |
--tag-name TAGNAME |
name of version to pull |
-v |
--verbose |
give verbose output |
Optimize reorganizes your repository data to make it more efficent to access
So far the only thing optimize does is that it creates a checkpoint patch
for a tag if you use the --checkpoint flag. You can specify the tag
with the --tag-name option, or just let darcs choose the most recent
tag.
Later optimize may do more.