[pgh-pm] Monotone & Darcs URLs

[Tom Moertel]

If you're curious about the dark-horse SCM contenders I mentioned at 
last night's meeting, here is where to go for more information:

Monotone

     http://www.venge.net/monotone/

     Pros:  Simple, powerful design. Able development team.
            Bright future, methinks.

     Cons:  It ain't done yet.  And, right this moment, the code
            is somewhat less reliable than normal because of
            some big changes being merged.

     Read the docs; they are clear and concise.


Darcs

     http://abridgegame.org/darcs/
     http://www.scannedinavian.org/DarcsWiki

     Pros:  Very simple and powerful. Cherry picking.
            Uses a fundamentally new model for SCM:
            "Theory of Patches."

     Cons:  Some corner cases are handled badly at present,
            e.g., taking horribly long to detect or handle.

     Darcs was recently praised in Linux Weekly News and
     has picked up a critical-mass user base.  Also, sharp
     criticisms of some of Darc's (currently unoptimized)
     algorithms have come from developers of other SCMs, in
     particular Arch.  (Feeling heat from Darcs, perhaps?)
     As a result of these two things, I expect that Darcs
     will be picking up developers (Darcs is largely a
     one-man show now) and that they will hammer out the
     sharp corners soon.

     Factoid:  Darcs is implemented in Haskell.

Cheers,
Tom