Roadmap
This is a high-level overview of the major objectives behind the upcoming releases of darcs.
See HowToHelp if you'd like to help us to reach our goals faster :-)
Current objectives
darcs 2.5.0 (2010-07)
infrastructure
- a Windows installer (issue1687)
- darcs-benchmark with graphs
performance enhancements
new features
darcs 2.6.0 (2011-01)
code quality
- improved separation of user IO from darcs business (issue1483)
- separation of library into core/repo/commands?
- type witnesses enabled everywhere
performance enhancements
- network: smart server (issue1773)
- local: cache overhaul
getting the basics right
- sort out XML and encodings issues (issue 1692, issue 1693, issue33)
- darcs record: make --no-test default, ask to record anyway when tests fail (issue332)
new features
Future objectives
Medium term:
- library cleanup: witnesses mandatory
- improved conflict marking [THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT] (issue833)
- merge refactors and issue1014 fix from David's fork
- make whatsnew -v readable [CLARIFY?]
- in-repo branches (issue555)
- make darcs really non-interactive if user desires so
- record huge patches (issue80)
Long term:
- a packed+hashed format for repositories? (issue1535)
- make darcs handle the Linux kernel repo
- seamless integration with git, svn, etc
- improved handling of filenames: AddAddConflicts [HARD]
- Darcs 3
Old-fashioned phase-out
There may be a point in the future where we decide it's time to phase out old-fashioned repositories.
Ideally we should make sure we've addressed as many of the following performance-oriented concerns with hashed repositories before we officially pull the plug.
Canaries
Canaries are projects/people which can give us an indicator on how well darcs is doing, that is, how useful darcs is wrt the pain from the various performance issues and bugs. They provide us with some combination of thoughtful, articulate, vocal, demanding and possessor-of-large-repositories.
- the darcs team (cf pain with merging David's fork)
- the GHC team (considered a switch to git; have postponed it indefinitely)
- the Tahoe team (apparently much happier with darcs 2) -- Well I, Zooko, am a member of the Tahoe team (http://allmydata.org), and I'm pretty happy with darcs-2, but my partners are not entirely happy with it. I would be happy to relay their concerns (or ask them to do so) now that this page and other developments make it appear as though there is an active and organized community effort which could usefully listen to those concerns!
Feel free to add yourself to the canary list, especially if you are switcher in one direction or the other.
