[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Arch vs. Darcs/BitKeeper: WC & Respo vs. WC == Repo?

[Martin Pool]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 11:21:19 -0500, Deliverable Mail wrote:

> Now, if I use a laptop and simply want two full repos with all
> histories on both and sync them when I get a chance to, e.g. if I work
> on a big screen at home and on my laptop in a cafe, -- why do I need
> the second layer?  What is it that tla enables through such two layers
> that darcs and bk don't?

I think the most important enabled feature is to allow people to work on a
single branch, in a centralized mode.  darcs and bk can't (?) directly do
that, which is a bit of a drawback -- many projects really do prefer
having a single central branch.  On the other hand moving work between
offline and centralized branches in tla is not as clean as it might be.

I think Tom would say that it enables the tool to control the organization
and location of branches: you can look through an archive and find lots of
related branches in orderly categories.  But I disagree; I think you can
achieve the same benefits, and be more friendly and flexible, by just
organizing branch-directories in a filesystem or web server.  (If that
approach makes sense to you, you might like to look at bazaar-ng.org.)

-- 
Martin