Darcs

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Darcs

Developer:	David Roundy
Latest release:	1.0.8 / June 16, 2006
OS:	Unix, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Windows
Use:	revision control
License:	GPL
Website:	Darcs home

The correct title of this article is darcs. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

Darcs is a distributed revision control system by David Roundy designed to replace the centralized CVS. Several noticeable differences in the design aim for simple use and powerful features. Each copy of the source tree acts as a full repository, allowing several different versions to be maintained in different locations. Patches are global to the repository and are subject under certain conditions to reordering, as governed by the project's "theory of patches".

The name is short for David's Advanced Revision Control System, but is usually capitalized like a non-proper noun; i.e., it is given lowercase letters (darcs), except at the beginnings of sentences.

In basic usage, you get a copy of a repository, make any changes, record the changes, pull changes from other repositories, and finally push or send changes to other repositories. To start a new repository, you can init any directory.

Other repositories can be local directories, or accessed by SSH or HTTP protocols. Even if it is not possible to write to the other repository, the changes can be sent by email to the repository owner for inclusion.

One notable, and somewhat unusual, aspect of darcs is that it is written in the Haskell programming language. Another is that many of the commands are interactive, allowing you to commit some but not all changes if you want, or to only pull certain files or specific changes from another repository. As a result, darcs has fewer distinct commands than many comparable revision control software products. Some users say this lowers the learning curve required to begin being productive with darcs.