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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.
In some cases, COMMAND actually consists of two words, a
super-command and a subcommand. For example, the ``display the
manifest'' command has the form darcs query manifest.
Not all commands modify the ``patches'' of your repository (that is, the named patches which other users can pull); some commands only affect the copy of the source tree you're working on (your ``working directory''), and some affect both. This table summarizes what you should expect from each one and will hopefully serve as guide when you're having doubts about which command to use.
| affects | patches | working directory |
| record | yes | no |
| unrecord | yes | no |
| rollback | yes | yes |
| revert | no | yes |
| unrevert | no | yes |
| pull | yes | yes |
| obliterate | yes | yes |
| apply | yes | yes |
| push6.1 | no | no |
| send6.2 | no | no |
| put6.3 | no | no |
COMMAND accepts --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
--disable option, which can be used in
_darcs/prefs/defaults to disable some commands in the repository. This
can be helpful if you want to protect the repository from accidental use of
advanced commands like obliterate, unpull, unrecord or amend-record.
--verbose option, which tells darcs to
provide additional output. The amount of verbosity varies from command to
command. Commands that accept --verbose\verb also accept --quiet\verb,
which surpresses non-error output, and --normal-verbosity\verb which can be
used to restore the default verbosity if --verbose or --quiet is in
the defaults file.
--debug option, which causes darcs to generate
additional output that may be useful for debugging its behavior, but which otherwise
would not be interesting.
--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 repository directory when calling the
command. This is useful when running darcs in a pipe, as might be the case
when running apply from a mailer.
Some commands, such as pull require a remote repository to be specified,
either from the command line or as a default. The --remote-repo
provides an alternative way to supply this remote repository path. This flag
can be seen as temporarily ``replacing'' the default repository. Setting it
causes the command to ignore the default repository (it also does not affect,
i.e. overwrite the default repository). On the other hand, if any other
repositories are supplied as command line arguments, this flag will be ignored
(and the default repository may be overwritten).
Many commands operate on a patch or patches that have already been recorded.
There are a number of options that specify which patches are selected for
these operations: --patch, --match, --tag, and variants
on these, which for --patch are --patches,
--from-patch, and --to-patch. The --patch and
--tag forms simply take (POSIX extended, aka egrep) regular
expressions and match them against tag and patch names. --match,
described below, allows more powerful patterns.
The plural forms of these options select all matching patches. The singular forms select the last matching patch. The range (from and to) forms select patches after or up to (both inclusive) the last matching patch.
These options use the current order of patches in the repository. darcs may reorder patches, so this is not necessarily the order of creation or the order in which patches were applied. However, as long as you are just recording patches in your own repository, they will remain in order.
When a patch or a group of patches is selected, all patches they depend on
get silently selected too. For example: darcs pull --patches bugfix
means ``pull all the patches with `bugfix' in their name, along with any
patches they require.'' If you really only want patches with `bugfix' in
their name, you should use the --no-deps option, which makes darcs
exclude any matched patches from the selection which have dependencies that
are themselves not explicitly matched by the selection.
For unrecord, unpull and obliterate, patches that
depend on the selected patches are silently included, or if
--no-deps is used selected patches with dependencies on not selected
patches are excluded from the selection.
Currently --match accepts five primitive match types, although
there are plans to expand it to match more patterns. Also, note that the
syntax is still preliminary and subject to change.
The first match type accepts a literal string which is checked against the patch name. The syntax is
darcs annotate --summary --match 'exact foo+bar'This is useful for situations where a patch name contains characters that could be considered special for regular expressions.
In this and the other match types, the argument must be enclosed in double quotes if it contains spaces. You can escape a quote in the argument with a backslash; backslash escapes itself, but it is treated literally if followed by a character other than a double quote or backslash, so it is typically not necessary to escape a backslash. No such escaping is necessary unless the argument is enclosed in double quotes.
The second match type accepts a regular expression which is checked against the patch name. The syntax is
darcs annotate --summary --match 'name foo'Note that to match regexp metacharacters, such as
(, literally, they
must be escaped with backslash along with any embedded double quotes. To
match a literal backslash it must be written quadrupled in general, but often
it need not be escaped, since backslash is only special in regexps when
followed by a metacharacter. In the following example pairs, the first
literal is matched by the second sequence in the match name:
``"'':``\"'', ``\'':``\\\\'',
``\x'':``\x'', ``('':``\(''.
The third match type matches the darcs hash for each patch:
darcs annotate --summary --match \ 'hash 20040403105958-53a90-c719567e92c3b0ab9eddd5290b705712b8b918ef'Note you need to provide the full hash string as above. This is intended to be used, for example, by programs allowing you to view darcs repositories (e.g. CGI scripts like viewCVS).
The fourth match type accepts a regular expression which is checked against the patch author. The syntax is
darcs annotate --summary --match 'author foo'
There is also support for matching by date. This is done using commands such as
darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "last week"' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date yesterday' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "today 14:00"' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "tea time yesterday"' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "3 days before last year at 17:00"' darcs changes --from-match 'date "Sat Jun 30 11:31:30 EDT 2004"'
Notes: when matching on the ISO format, a partial date is treated as a range. English dates can either refer to a specific day (``6 months ago',``day before yesterday''), or to an interval from some past date (``last month'') to the present. Putting this all together, if today is ``2004-07-24'' then the following matches should work:
| date | patches selected |
|---|---|
| 2004 | from 2004-01-01 up to and including 2004-12-31 |
| 2004-01 | from 2004-01-01 up to and including 2004-01-31 |
| 2004-01-01 | during 2004-01-01 |
| today | during 2004-07-24 (starting midnight in your timezone) |
| yesterday | during 2004-07-23 |
| 6 months ago | during 2004-01-23 |
| last 6 months | since 2004-01-23 |
| last month | since 2004-06-23 (not 2004-06-01!) |
| last week | since 2004-07-16 |
For more precise control, you may specify an interval, either in a small subset of English or of the ISO 8601 format. If you use the ISO format, note that durations, when specified alone, are interpreted as being relative to the current date and time.
darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "between 2004-03-12 and last week"' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "after 2005"' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "in the last 3 weeks"' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "P3M/2006-03-17"' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "2004-01-02/2006-03-17"' darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "P2M6D"'
You may also prefer to combine date matching with a more specific pattern.
darcs annotate --summary --match 'date "last week" && name foo'
The --match pattern can include the logical operators &&,
|| and not, as well as grouping of patterns with parentheses.
For example
darcs annotate --summary --match 'name record && not name overrode'
whatsnew and record which would otherwise require reading
every file in the repository 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 explicitly.
David Roundy <droundy@abridgegame.org>. The easiest way to do
this is
to define an environment variable 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 ![[*]](./crossref.png)
.
Or, you could specify the author on a per-repository basis using the
_darcs/prefs/author file as described in section .
Also, a global author file can be created in your home directory with the name
.darcs/author. This file overrides the
contents of the environment variables, but a repository-specific author
file overrides the global author file.
--dont-compress option, which causes darcs not to compress the patch
file.
--dry-run option will cause darcs not to actually take the specified
action, but only print what would have happened. Not all commands accept
--dry-run, but those that do should accept the --summary option.
--summary option shows a summary of the patches that would have been
pulled/pushed/whatever. The format is similar to the output format of
cvs update and looks like this:
A ./added_but_not_recorded.c A! ./added_but_not_recorded_conflicts.c a ./would_be_added_if_look_for_adds_option_was_used.h M ./modified.t -1 +1 M! ./modified_conflicts.t -1 +1 R ./removed_but_not_recorded.c R! ./removed_but_not_recorded_conflicts.c
You can probably guess what the flags mean from the clever file names.
--look-for-adds option available for
whatsnew and record. They have not been added yet, but would be
added automatically if --look-for-adds were used with the next
record command.
To resolve conflicts using an external tool, you need to specify a command to use, e.g.
--external-merge '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 versions.
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
--external-merge 'xxdiff -m -O -M %o %1 %a %2'To use
kdiff3, you can use
--external-merge 'kdiff3 --output %o %a %1 %2'To use
tortoiseMerge, you can use
--external-merge 'tortoiseMerge /base:"%a" /mine:"%1" /theirs:"%2" /merged:"%o"'(
tortoiseMerge is a nice merge tool that comes with TortoiseSVN and works well
on Windows.)
Note that the command is split into space-separated words and the first one is
execed with the rest as arguments--it is not a shell command. In particular,
on Windows this means that the first command path should not contain spaces and
you should make sure the command is in your PATH.
The substitution of the % escapes is done everywhere. If you need to prevent
substitution you can use a double percentage sign, i.e. %%a is substituted with
%a. Here is an example script to use the Emacs' Ediff package for merging.
#! /bin/sh
# External merge command for darcs, using Emacs Ediff, via server if possible.
# It needs args %1 %2 %a %o, i.e. the external merge command is, say,
# `emerge3 %1 %2 %a %o'.
test $# -eq 4 || exit 1
form="(ediff-merge-files-with-ancestor"
while test $# -gt 0; do
count=$count.
if [ $count = .... ]; then
form=$form\ nil # Lisp STARTUP-HOOKS arg
fi
case $1 in # Worry about quoting -- escape " and \
*[\"\\]* ) form=$form\ \"$(echo $1 | sed -e's/["\\]/\\\0/g')\" ;;
*) form=$form\ \"$1\" ;;
esac
shift
done
form=$form')'
( emacsclient --eval "$form" || # Emacs 22 server
gnudoit "$form" || # XEmacs/Emacs 21 server
emacs --eval "$form" || # Relatively slow to start up
xemacs -eval "$form" # Horribly slow to start up
) 2>/dev/null
It would be invoked like:
--external-merge 'emerge3 %1 %2 %a %o'
If you figure out how to use darcs with another merge tool, please let me know what flags you used so I can mention it here.
Note that if you do use an external merge tool, most likely you will want
to add to your defaults file
(_darcs/prefs/defaults or ~/.darcs/prefs, see )
a line such as
ALL external-merge kdiff3 --output %o %a %1 %2or
ALL external-merge tortoiseMerge /base:"%a" /mine:"%1" /theirs:"%2" /merged:"%o"
Note that the defaults file does not want quotes around the command.
--posthook to specify the command. This is useful
for people who want to have a command run whenever a patch is applied. Using
--no-posthook will disable running the command.
--prompt-posthook to force prompting before running the
posthook command. For security reasons, this is the default. When
defining a posthook for apply, you will need to use
--run-posthook or else you will get an error, because the
subprocess which runs the apply command cannot prompt the user.
Some darcs commands export to the posthook command information about the
changes being made. In particular, three environment variables are defined.
DARCS_PATCHES contains a human-readable summary of the patches being
acted upon. The format is the same as "darcs changes". DARCS_PATCHES_XML
Contains the same details, in the same XML format as "darcs changes". Finally,
DARCS_FILES contains a list of the files affected, one file per line.
If your repository has filenames including newlines, you'll just have to
cope. Note, however, that none of these environment variables are
defined when running under windows. Note also that we refuse to pass
environment variables greater in size than 10k, in order to avoid triggering
E2BIG errors.
--prehook to specify the command. An example use is
for people who want to have a command run whenever a patch is to be recorded, such as
translating line endings before recording patches. Using
--no-prehook will disable running the command.
--prompt-prehook to force prompting before running the
prehook command. For security reasons, this is the default.
For commands which invoke ssh, darcs will normally multiplex ssh sessions over a single connection as long as your version of ssh has the ControlMaster feature from OpenSSH versions 3.9 and above. This option will avoid darcs trying to use this feature even if your ssh supports it.
--umask will cause Darcs to switch to a different umask before
writing to the repository.
But sometimes you may want to manage a group of ``sub'' repositories'
preference files with a global repository, or use darcs in some other
advanced way. The best way is probably to put
ALL dont-restrict-paths in _darcs/prefs/defaults. This turns
off all sanity checking for file paths in patches.
Path checking can be temporarily turned on with --restrict-paths on
the command line, when pulling or applying unknown patches.
--help as an argument gives a brief
summary of what commands are available.
The --overview option gives a more technical summary of
what the commands actually do.
--version tells you the version of
darcs you are using. Calling darcs with the flag --exact-version
gives the precise version of darcs, even if that version doesn't correspond
to a released version number. This is helpful with bug reports, especially
when running with a ``latest'' version of darcs.
--commands gives a simple list
of available commands. This latter arrangement is primarily intended for
the use of command-line autocompletion facilities, as are available in
bash.
You could also call help as a command. This is equivalent to calling
darcs -help.
the --help to that command. For example, darcs help query manifest
is equivalent to darcs query manifest --help.
Usage: darcs help [OPTION]... [<DARCS_COMMAND> [DARCS_SUBCOMMAND]]
Options:
--match |
|
Display help for darcs or a single command. help displays usage information for darcs in general or for a single command (for example, darcs help query manifest).
Usage: darcs initialize [OPTION]...
Options:
--plain-pristine-tree |
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--no-pristine-tree |
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--hashed |
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--darcs-2 |
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--old-fashioned-inventory |
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--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Initialize a new source tree as a darcs repository.
Call initialize once for each project you work on. Run it from the top
level directory of the project, with the project files already there.
initialize will set up all the directories and files darcs needs in order to
start keeping track of revisions for your project.
initialize creates a single directory named _darcs, with contents
for internal use. The one subdictory of interest to users is
_darcs/prefs, which will include an empty file _darcs/prefs/motd
(see Section ), as well as files named boring and
binaries, which contain useful defaults as described in Sections
et seq.
These options describe possible repository formats to use.
old-fashioned-inventory is the default. While it has minimal features, it is the best tested and the limitations
it does have are well known.
hashed Offers several features while still being compatible with old-fashioned repositories. The specific features are:
_darcs/pristine directory no longer holds the pristine
cache. This disallows certain hackish short-cuts, but also dramatically
reduces the danger of third-party programs (e.g. DreamWeaver) recursing
into the pristine cache and corrupting darcs repositories.
^C). Secondly, if the source repository disappears,
or you lose network connectivity, some operations may fail.
darcs-2 Enables all available features, and requiring that all repos for a project use the same format. In addition to the features of the hashed format described above, the darcs-2 format also enables the following:
initialize with the
--no-pristine-tree flag to create a repository with no pristine
tree. Please see Section for more information.
Usage: darcs get [OPTION]... <REPOSITORY> [<DIRECTORY>]
Options:
--repo-name DIRECTORY |
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--partial |
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--lazy |
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--ephemeral |
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--complete |
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--to-match PATTERN |
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--to-patch REGEXP |
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-t |
--tag REGEXP |
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--context FILENAME |
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--set-default |
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--no-set-default |
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--set-scripts-executable |
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--dont-set-scripts-executable |
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--nolinks |
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--plain-pristine-tree |
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--no-pristine-tree |
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--hashed |
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--old-fashioned-inventory |
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--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Advanced options:
--no-ssh-cm |
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--ssh-cm |
|
If the remote repository 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 second copies, by default they will access your first
copy--which may not be what you want.
You may specify the name of the repository created by providing a second argument to get, which is a directory name.
--tag, --to-patch or
--to-match options, or you can use the --context=FILENAME
option, which specifies a file containing a context generated with
darcs changes --context. This allows you (for example) to include in
your compiled program an option to output the precise version of the
repository from which it was generated, and then perhaps ask users to
include this information in bug reports.
Note that when specifying --to-patch or --to-match, 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 either to tag it or create a context
file.
--no-pristine-tree flag to create a repository with no pristine
tree. Please see Section for more information.
Usage: darcs put [OPTION]... <NEW REPOSITORY>
Options:
--to-match PATTERN |
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--to-patch REGEXP |
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-t |
--tag REGEXP |
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--context FILENAME |
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--set-scripts-executable |
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--dont-set-scripts-executable |
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--hashed |
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--old-fashioned-inventory |
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--set-default |
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--no-set-default |
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--repodir DIRECTORY |
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Advanced options:
--apply-as USERNAME |
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--apply-as-myself |
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--no-ssh-cm |
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--ssh-cm |
|
Put is the opposite of get. Put copies the content of the current repository and puts it in a newly created repository.
WARNING: Put is far less optimized than get, especially for local repositories. We recommend avoiding use of put except for small repositories.
Put is used when you already have a repository and want to make a copy of it. A typical use-case is when you want to branch your project.
Put works by first initializing a repository. If the new repository is
not on the local file system then darcs will login to the remote host
and run darcs init there. After the new repository is created
all selected patches will be pushed just as with the command
push.
If you give the --apply-as flag, darcs will use sudo to apply the
changes as a different user. This can be useful if you want to set up a
system where several users can modify the same repository, but you don't
want to allow them full write access. This isn't secure against skilled
malicious attackers, but at least can protect your repository from clumsy,
inept or lazy users.
--tag, --to-patch or
--to-match options, or you can use the --context=FILENAME
option, which specifies a file containing a context generated with
darcs changes --context. This allows you (for example) to include in
your compiled program an option to output the precise version of the
repository from which it was generated, and then perhaps ask users to
include this information in bug reports.
Note that when specifying --to-patch or --to-match, 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 either to tag it or create a context
file.
Usage: darcs add [OPTION]... <FILE or DIRECTORY> ...
Options:
--boring |
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--case-ok |
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-r |
--recursive |
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--not-recursive |
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--date-trick |
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--no-date-trick |
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--repodir DIRECTORY |
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--dry-run |
|
Advanced options:
--umask UMASK |
|
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 MacOS treats such files as being one and the same.
You can not add symbolic links to darcs. If you try to do that, darcs will refuse and print an error message. Perhaps you want to make symbolic links to the files in darcs instead?
By default darcs will ignore all files that match any of the boring patterns.
If you want to add such a file anyway you must use the --boring option.
The --date-trick option allows you to enable an experimental trick
to make add conflicts, in which two users each add a file or directory with
the same name, less problematic. While this trick is completely safe, it
is not clear to what extent it is beneficial.
Usage: darcs remove [OPTION]... <FILE or DIRECTORY> ...
Options:
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Advanced options:
--umask UMASK |
|
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. Be aware that the file WILL be deleted from any other copy of the repository to which you later apply the patch.
Usage: darcs mv [OPTION]... [FILE or DIRECTORY]...
Options:
--case-ok |
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--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Advanced options:
--umask UMASK |
|
Darcs mv needs to be called whenever you want to move files or directories. Unlike remove, mv actually performs the move itself in your working copy. This is why ``mv'' isn't called ``move'', since it is really almost equivalent to the unix command ``mv''.
Darcs mv will by default refuse to rename a file if there already exists a
file having the same name apart from case. This is because doing so could
create a repository that could not be used on file systems that are case
insensitive (such as Apple's HFS+). You can override this by with the flag
--case-ok.
Usage: darcs replace [OPTION]... <OLD> <NEW> <FILE> ...
Options:
--token-chars "[CHARS]" |
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-f |
--force |
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--no-force |
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--repodir DIRECTORY |
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Advanced options:
--ignore-times |
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--umask UMASK |
|
Replace allows you to change a specified token wherever it occurs in the specified files. The replace is encoded in a special patch and will merge as expected with other patches. 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. You may prefer to define tokens in terms
of delimiting characters instead of allowed characters using a flag such as
--token-chars '[^ \n\t]', which would define a token as being
white-space delimited.
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.
When using darcs replace, the ``new'' token may not already appear in the file--if that is the case, the replace change would not be invertible. This limitation holds only on the already-recorded version of the file.
There is a potentially confusing difference, however, when a replace is used to make another replace possible:
% darcs replace newtoken aaack ./foo.c % darcs replace oldtoken newtoken ./foo.c % darcs recordwill be valid, even if
newtoken and oldtoken are both present
in the recorded version of foo.c, while the sequence
% [manually edit foo.c replacing newtoken with aaack] % darcs replace oldtoken newtoken ./foo.cwill fail because ``newtoken'' still exists in the recorded version of
foo.c. The reason for the difference is that when recording, a
``replace'' patch always is recorded before any manual changes,
which is usually what you want, since often you will introduce new
occurrences of the ``newtoken'' in your manual changes. In contrast,
multiple ``replace'' changes are recorded in the order in which
they were made.
Usage: darcs record [OPTION]... [FILE or DIRECTORY]...
Options:
-m |
--patch-name PATCHNAME |
|
|
-A |
--author EMAIL |
|
|
--no-test |
|
||
--test |
|
||
--leave-test-directory |
|
||
--remove-test-directory |
|
||
-a |
--all |
|
|
--pipe |
|
||
-i |
--interactive |
|
|
--ask-deps |
|
||
--no-ask-deps |
|
||
--edit-long-comment |
|
||
--skip-long-comment |
|
||
--prompt-long-comment |
|
||
-l |
--look-for-adds |
|
|
--dont-look-for-adds |
|
||
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Advanced options:
--logfile FILE |
|
||
--delete-logfile |
|
||
--compress |
|
||
--dont-compress |
|
||
--ignore-times |
|
||
--umask UMASK |
|
||
--set-scripts-executable |
|
||
--dont-set-scripts-executable |
|
If you provide one or more files or directories as additional arguments to record, you will only be prompted to changes in those files or directories. 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 $DARCS_EDITOR, $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.
If you wish, you may specify the patch name and log using the
--logfile flag. If you do so, the first line of the specified file
will be taken to be the patch name, and the remainder will be the ``long
comment''. This feature can be especially handy if you have a test that
fails several times on the record (thus aborting the record), so you don't
have to type in the long comment multiple times. The file's contents will
override the --patch-name option.
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 repository. This can be used, for example, if a piece of code requires a function to be defined, which 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.
It is possible to record a patch which has no actual changes but which
has specific dependencies. This type of patch can be thought of as a
``partial tag''. The darcs tag command will record a patch
with no actual changes but which depends on the entire current
inventory of the repository. The darcs record --ask-deps with
no selected changes will record a patch that depends on only those
patches selected via the --ask-deps operation, resulting in a
patch which describes a set of patches; the presence of this primary
patch in a repository implies the presence of (at least) the
depended-upon patches.
If you configure darcs to run a test suite, darcs will run this test on the
recorded repository to make sure it is valid. Darcs first creates a pristine
copy of the source tree (in a temporary directory), 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.
If you pass --set-scripts-executable to darcs record, darcs will set scripts
executable in the test directory before running the test.
If you run record with the --pipe option, you will be prompted for
the patch date, the author, the patch name, and the long comment.
The long comment will
extend until the end of file of stdin is reached (ctrl-D on Unixy systems,
ctrl-Z on systems running a Microsoft OS).
This interface is intended for scripting darcs, in particular for writing
repository conversion scripts. The prompts are intended mostly as a useful
guide (since scripts won't need them), to help you understand the format in
which to provide the input.
By default, record works interactively. Probably the only thing you need
to know about using this is that you can press ? at the prompt to be
shown a list of the rest of the options and what they do. The rest should be
clear from there. Here's a
``screenshot'' to demonstrate:
hunk ./hello.pl +2 +#!/usr/bin/perl +print "Hello World!\n"; Shall I record this patch? (2/2) [ynWsfqadjk], or ? for help: ? How to use record... y: record this patch n: don't record it w: wait and decide later, defaulting to no s: don't record the rest of the changes to this file f: record the rest of the changes to this file d: record selected patches a: record all the remaining patches q: cancel record j: skip to next patch k: back up to previous patch h or ?: show this help <Space>: accept the current default (which is capitalized)What you can't see in that ``screenshot'' is that
darcs will also try to use
color in your terminal to make the output even easier to read.
Usage: darcs pull [OPTION]... [REPOSITORY]...
Options:
--matches PATTERN |
|
||
-p |
--patches REGEXP |
|
|
-t |
--tags REGEXP |
|
|
-a |
--all |
|
|
-i |
--interactive |
|
|
--mark-conflicts |
|
||
--allow-conflicts |
|
||
--dont-allow-conflicts |
|
||
--external-merge COMMAND |
|
||
--test |
|
||
--no-test |
|
||
--dry-run |
|
||
--xml-output |
|
||
-s |
--summary |
|
|
--no-summary |
|
||
--no-deps |
|
||
--set-default |
|
||
--no-set-default |
|
||
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Advanced options:
--intersection |
|
||
--union |
|
||
--complement |
|
||
--compress |
|
||
--dont-compress |
|
||
--nolinks |
|
||
--ignore-times |
|
||
--remote-repo URL |
|
||
--no-ssh-cm |
|
||
--ssh-cm |
|
||
--set-scripts-executable |
|
||
--dont-set-scripts-executable |
|
||
--umask UMASK |
|
Pull is used to bring changes made in another repository into the current repository (that is, either the one in the current directory, or the one specified with the -repodir option). Pull allows you to bring over all or some of the patches that are in that repository but not in this one. Pull accepts arguments, which are URLs 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.
If you provide more than one repository as an argument to pull, darcs'
behavior is determined by the presence of the --complement,
--intersection, and --union flags.
--union) behavior is to pull any patches
that are in any of the specified repositories (
).
--intersection flag, darcs
will only pull those patches which are present in all source
repositories (
).
--complement flag, darcs will only
pull elements in the first repository that do not exist in any of the
remaining repositories6.4 (
)).
You can use an external interactive merge tool to resolve conflicts with the
flag --external-merge. For more details see
subsection .
The --patches, --matches, --tags, and --no-deps
options can be used to select which patches to pull, as described in
subsection .
If you specify the --test option, pull will run the test (if a test
exists) on a scratch copy of the repository contents prior to actually performing
the pull. If the test fails, the pull will be aborted.
Adding the --verbose option causes another section to appear in the
output which also displays a summary of patches that you have and the remote
repository lacks. Thus, the following syntax can be used to show you all the patch
differences between two repositories:
darcs pull --dry-run --verbose
Usage: darcs push [OPTION]... [REPOSITORY]
Options:
--matches PATTERN |
|
||
-p |
--patches REGEXP |
|
|
-t |
--tags REGEXP |
|
|
--no-deps |
|
||
-a |
--all |
|
|
-i |
--interactive |
|
|
--sign |
|
||
--sign-as KEYID |
|
||
--sign-ssl IDFILE |
|
||
--dont-sign |
|
||
--dry-run |
|
||
--xml-output |
|
||
-s |
--summary |
|
|
--no-summary |
|
||
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
||
--set-default |
|
||
--no-set-default |
|
Advanced options:
--apply-as USERNAME |
|
||
--apply-as-myself |
|
||
--nolinks |
|
||
--remote-repo URL |
|
||
--no-ssh-cm |
|
||
--ssh-cm |
|
Push is the opposite of pull. Push allows you to copy changes from the current repository into another repository.
For obvious reasons, you can only push to repositories to which you have
write access. In addition, you can only push to repos that you access
either on the local file system or with ssh. In order to apply with ssh,
darcs must also be installed on the remote computer. The command invoked
to run ssh may be configured by the DARCS_SSH environment variable
(see subsection ). The command invoked via ssh is always
darcs, i.e. the darcs executable must be in the default path on
the remote machine.
Push works by creating a patch bundle, and then running darcs apply in the
target repository using that patch bundle. This means that the default
options for apply in the target repository (such as, for
example, --test) will affect the behavior of push. This also means
that push is somewhat less efficient than pull.
When you receive an error message such as
bash: darcs: command not foundthen this means that the darcs on the remote machine could not be started. Make sure that the darcs executable is called
darcs and is found in the default path. The default path can
be different in interactive and in non-interactive shells. Say
ssh login@remote.machine darcsto try whether the remote darcs can be found, or
ssh login@remote.machine 'echo $PATH'(note the single quotes) to check the default path.
If you give the --apply-as flag, darcs will use sudo to apply the
changes as a different user. This can be useful if you want to set up a
system where several users can modify the same repository, but you don't
want to allow them full write access. This isn't secure against skilled
malicious attackers, but at least can protect your repository from clumsy,
inept or lazy users.
The --patches, --matches, --tags, and --no-deps
options can be used to select which patches to push, as described in
subsection .
When there are conflicts, the behavior of push is determined by the default
flags to apply in the target repository. Most commonly, for
pushed-to repositories, you'd like to have --dont-allow-conflicts as
a default option to apply (by default, it is already the default...). If
this is the case, when there are conflicts on push, darcs will fail with an
error message. You can then resolve by pulling the conflicting patch,
recording a resolution and then pushing the resolution together with the
conflicting patch.
Darcs does not have an explicit way to tell you which patch conflicted, only the file name. You may want to pull all the patches from the remote repository just to be sure. If you don't want to do this in your working directory, you can create another darcs working directory for this purpose.
If you want, you could set the target repository to use --allow-conflicts.
In this case conflicting patches will be applied, but the conflicts will
not be marked in the working directory.
If, on the other hand, you have --mark-conflicts specified as a
default flag for apply in the target repository, when there is a conflict,
it will be marked in the working directory of the target repository. In
this case, you should resolve the conflict in the target repository itself.
Usage: darcs send [OPTION]... [REPOSITORY]
Options:
--matches PATTERN |
|
||
-p |
--patches REGEXP |
|
|
-t |
--tags REGEXP |
|
|
--no-deps |
|
||
-a |
--all |
|
|
-i |
--interactive |
|
|
--from EMAIL |
|
||
-A |
--author EMAIL |
|
|
--to EMAIL |
|
||
--cc EMAIL |
|
||
--subject SUBJECT |
|
||
-o |
--output FILE |
|
|
-O |
--output-auto-name |
|
|
--sign |
|
||
--sign-as KEYID |
|
||
--sign-ssl IDFILE |
|
||
--dont-sign |
|
||
--dry-run |
|
||
--xml-output |
|
||
-s |
--summary |
|
|
--no-summary |
|
||
--edit-description |
|
||
--dont-edit-description |
|
||
--set-default |
|
||
--no-set-default |
|
||
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
||
--sendmail-command COMMAND |
|
Advanced options:
--logfile FILE |
|
||
--delete-logfile |
|
||
--remote-repo URL |
|
||
--context FILENAME |
|
||
--no-ssh-cm |
|
||
--ssh-cm |
|
Send is used to prepare a bundle of patches that can be applied to a target repository. Send accepts the URL of the repository as an argument. When called without an argument, send will use the most recent repository that was either pushed to, pulled from or sent to. By default, the patch bundle is sent by email, although you may save it to a file.
Do not confuse the --author options with the return address
that darcs send will set for your patch bundle.
For example, if you have two email addresses A and B:
--author A but your machine is configured to send mail from
address B by default, then the return address on your message will be B.
--from A and your mail client supports setting the
From: address arbitrarily (some non-Unix-like mail clients, especially,
may not support this), then the return address will be A; if it does
not support this, then the return address will be B.
--from nor --author, then the return
address will be B.
In addition, unless you specify the sendmail command with
--sendmail-command, darcs sends email using the default email
command on your computer. This default command is determined by the
configure script. Thus, on some non-Unix-like OSes,
--from is likely to not work at all.
The --output, --output-auto-name, and --to 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
specify --output-auto-name, the patch bundle is saved to a file with an
automatically generated name. If you give one or more --to arguments,
the bundle of patches is sent to those locations. The locations may either be email
addresses or urls that the patch should be submitted to via HTTP.
If you don't provide any of these options, darcs will look at the contents of
the _darcs/prefs/email file in the target repository (if it exists), and
send the patch by email to that address. In this case, you may use the
--cc option to specify additional recipients without overriding the
default repository email address.
If there is no email address associated with the repository, darcs will prompt you for an email address.
Use the --subject flag to set the subject of the e-mail to be sent.
If you don't provide a subject on the command line, darcs will make one up
based on names of the patches in the patch bundle.
The --patches, --matches, --tags, and --no-deps
options can be used to select which patches to send, as described in
subsection .
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 a message
to go along with your patches.
If you want to use a command different from the default one for sending email,
you need to specify a command line with the --sendmail-command option. The
command line can contain some format specifiers which are replaced by the actual
values. Accepted format specifiers are %s for subject, %t for to,
%c for cc, %b for the body of the mail, %f for from, %a
for the patch bundle and the same specifiers in uppercase for the URL-encoded values.
Additionally you can add %< to the end of the command line if the command
expects the complete email message on standard input. E.g. the command lines for evolution
and msmtp look like this:
evolution "mailto:%T?subject=%S&attach=%A&cc=%C&body=%B" msmtp -t %<
Usage: darcs apply [OPTION]... <PATCHFILE>
Options:
--verify PUBRING |
|
||
--verify-ssl KEYS |
|
||
--no-verify |
|
||
-a |
--all |
|
|
-i |
--interactive |
|
|
--dry-run |
|
||
--xml-output |
|
||
--mark-conflicts |
|
||
--allow-conflicts |
|
||
--no-resolve-conflicts |
|
||
--dont-allow-conflicts |
|
||
--external-merge COMMAND |
|
||
--no-test |
|
||
--test |
|
||
--leave-test-directory |
|
||
--remove-test-directory |
|
||
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Advanced options:
--reply FROM |
|
||
--cc EMAIL |
|
||
--happy-forwarding |
|
||
--sendmail-command COMMAND |
|
||
--ignore-times |
|
||
--compress |
|
||
--dont-compress |
|
||
--set-scripts-executable |
|
||
--dont-set-scripts-executable |
|
||
--umask UMASK |
|
Apply is used to apply a bundle of patches to this repository. Such a bundle may be created using send.
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.6.5 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 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. Note that the
--cc option requires the --reply option, which
provides the ``From'' address.
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: In an attempt to make sure no one else
can read your email, mutt seems to set the umask
such that patches created with the above macro are not world-readable, so
use it with care.
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 repository by applying patches automatically as they are received by
email, you will also want to use the --dont-allow-conflicts option.
--dont-allow-conflicts flag causes apply to fail when applying a
patch would cause conflicts. This flag is recommended on repositories
which will be pushed to or sent to.
--allow-conflicts will allow conflicts, but will keep the local and
recorded versions in sync on the repository. This means the conflict will exist
in both locations until it is resolved.
--mark-conflicts will add conflict markers to illustrate the the
conflict.
You can use an external interactive merge tool to resolve conflicts with the
flag --external-merge. For more details see
subsection .
If you provide the --interactive flag, darcs will
ask you for each change in the patch bundle whether or not you wish to
apply that change. The opposite is the --all flag, which can be
used to override an interactive which might be set in your
``defaults'' file.
If you want to use a command different from the default one for sending mail,
you need to specify a command line with the --sendmail-command option.
The command line can contain the format specifier %t for to
and you can add %< to the end of the command line if the command
expects the complete mail on standard input. For example, the command line for
msmtp looks like this:
msmtp -t %<
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 sent 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.
Usage: darcs whatsnew [OPTION]... [FILE or DIRECTORY]...
Options:
-s |
--summary |
|
|
--no-summary |
|
||
-u |
--unified |
|
|
-l |
--look-for-adds |
|
|
--dont-look-for-adds |
|
||
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Advanced options:
--ignore-times |
|
||
--boring |
|
Display unrecorded changes in the working copy.
whatsnew gives you a view of what changes you've made in your working
copy that haven't yet been recorded. The changes are displayed in
darcs patch format. Note that -look-for-adds implies -summary usage.
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. If you want to see some context
around your changes, you can use the -u option, to get output
similar to the unidiff format.
If you give one or more file or directory names as an argument to
whatsnew, darcs will output only changes to those files or to files in
those directories.
Usage: darcs changes [OPTION]... [FILE or DIRECTORY]...
Options:
--to-match PATTERN |
|
||
--to-patch REGEXP |
|
||
--to-tag REGEXP |
|
||
--from-match PATTERN |
|
||
--from-patch REGEXP |
|
||
--from-tag REGEXP |
|
||
--last NUMBER |
|
||
--matches PATTERN |
|
||
-p |
--patches REGEXP |
|
|
-t |
--tags REGEXP |
|
|
--only-to-files |
|
||
--context |
|
||
--xml-output |
|
||
--human-readable |
|
||
--count |
|
||
-s |
--summary |
|
|
--no-summary |
|
||
--reverse |
|
||
--repo URL |
|
||
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
||
-a |
--all |
|
|
-i |
--interactive |
|
Advanced options:
--no-ssh-cm |
|
||
--ssh-cm |
|
Changes gives a changelog-style summary of the repository history, including options for altering how the patches are selected and displayed.
When given one or more files or directories as an argument, changes lists only those patches which affect those files or the contents of those directories or, of course, the directories themselves. This includes changes that happened to files before they were moved or renamed.
If changes is given a --from-patch, --from-match, or
--from-tag option, it outputs only those changes since that tag or
patch.
Without any options to limit the scope of the changes, history will be displayed going back as far as possible.
When given the --context flag, darcs changes outputs sufficient
information to allow the current state of the repository to be
recreated at a later date. This information should generally be piped to a
file, and then can be used later in conjunction with
darcs get --context to recreate the current version. Note that
while the --context flag may be used in conjunction with
--xml-output or --human-readable, in neither case will darcs
get be able to read the output. On the other hand, sufficient information
will be output for a knowledgeable human to recreate the current
state of the repository.
The show command provides access to several subcommands which can be used to investigate the state of a repository.
Usage: darcs show authors [OPTION]...
Options:
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
The authors command writes a list of all patch authors in the repository to standard output.
Usage: darcs show contents [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Options:
--match PATTERN |
|
||
-p |
--patch REGEXP |
|
|
-t |
--tag REGEXP |
|
|
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
Show contents can be used to display an earlier version of some file(s). If you give show contents no version arguments, it displays the recorded version of the file(s).
Usage: darcs show files [OPTION]...
Options:
--files |
|
||
--no-files |
|
||
--directories |
|
||
--no-directories |
|
||
--pending |
|
||
--no-pending |
|
||
-0 |
--null |
|
|
--repodir DIRECTORY |
|
The files command lists the version-controlled files in the working copy. The similar manifest command, lists the same files, excluding any directories.
By default (and if the --pending option is specified),
the effect of pending patches on the repository is taken into account.
In other words, if you add a file using darcs add, it
immediately appears in the output of query manifest, even if it
is not yet recorded. If you specify the --no-pending option,
query manifest will only list recorded files (and directories).
The --files and --directories options control whether
files and directories are included in the output. The
--no-files and --no-directories options have the
reverse effect. The default is to include files, but not directories.
If you specify the --null option, the file names are written to
standard output in unescaped form, and separated by ASCII NUL bytes.
This format is suitable for further automatic processing (for example,
using xargs -0).
Usage: darcs show tags [OPTION]...
Options:
--repodir DIRECTORY |
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The tags command writes a list of all tags in the repository to standard output.
Tab characters (ASCII character 9) in tag names are changed to spaces for better interoperability with shell tools. A warning is printed if this happens.
Usage: darcs show repo [OPTION]...
Options:
--repodir DIRECTORY |
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--files |
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--no-files |
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--xml-output |
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The show repo displays information about
the current repository: the location, the type, etc.
This is provided as informational output for two purposes: curious
users and scripts invoking darcs. For the latter, this information
can be parsed to facilitate the script; for example,
darcs show repo | grep Root: | awk {print $2}
can be used to locate the
top-level _darcs directory from anyplace within a darcs repository
working directory.
If the --files option is specifie