This text assumes that you have already installed darcs and obtained the development version of Carpet, but are possibly too scared or lazy to actually read the darcs manual.
You edit the Carpet source code as usual. At certain times you can say
darcs whatsnew
to find out what you changed. As you have a copy of the Carpet repository stored locally, this will not require an internet connection and will be very fast. One other difference from CVS is that darcs always considers all changes in the repository, and not just changes to a certain file or directory.
If you add or remove files or directories to the repository, say
darcs add FILENAME
or
darcs remove FILENAME
This does not actually create or delete files; you have to do that yourself. If you move a file or directory, say
darcs mv FROM TO
to tell darcs about that. This does actually perform the move, as indicated by the darcs command mv, which is spelled the same way as the corresponding Unix command.
If you have implemented a certain feature, corrected a certain error, or fixed a typo, then it is time to record that change as a patch. The command
darcs record
walks you through all your local changes and asks you whether
they should be part of the patch. Please put only related changes
into a single patch; it is very easy to create multiple
patches. Can also be applied to a specific file.
To skip the process of verifying each "hunk", use
the -a option.
Each patch needs a one-line description. This description should be somewhat descriptive, because other people will decide from this description whether they want this patch or not. "Correct error" will probably not be very helpful, as won't "Use cout instead of printf", because these descriptions do not describe what part of Carpet is actually changed. On the other hand, "Fix typo in comment" is probably good enough. If you feel like it, you can also add a detailed description of the patch. Note that this description should describe the patch, and should not describe how to use a certain feature; this should go into a comment or a README or the documentation.
If you later discover that your patch is incomplete, missing a file, or contains an error, then you can use
darcs amend-record
to correct it. It is often better to correct an erroneous patch than to pile a second patch on top of it. If you think that things are very wrong, then
darcs unrecord
deletes the patch entirely. None of the above commands change your working directory.
When you have one or a few patches that you would like to contribute back to the community, then you can use
darcs send
to send these to the Carpet mailing list. The Carpet maintainers can then apply this patch to the Carpet repository, so that the next darcs pull will list this patch for all people. darcs send is the first command described on this page that actually needs network access.
To view the last n patches applied:
darcs changes --last=n
To see how two patches a and b differ
darcs diff --from-patch=a --to-patch=b
Darcs offers a host of commands to undo various actions.
darcs unrecord
was already described above.
darcs unpull
Undoes the effect of pulling a patch from a remote repository. This is useful if you suspect that this patch introduced an error. And
darcs revert
Undoes changes to your working directory that have not yet been recorded. Can also be applied to a specific file.
As usual, the authoritative source of information is the darcs manual, which also ships with your darcs installation.
Go back to the Carpet home page.