darcs (1) - Linux Manuals
darcs: an advanced revision control system
NAME
darcs - an advanced revision control systemSYNOPSIS
darcs command <arguments|[options]>...Where the commands and their respective arguments are
darcs help
[<darcs_command> [darcs_subcommand]]
darcs add
<file|directory> ...
darcs remove
<file|directory> ...
darcs move
<source> ... <destination>
darcs replace
<old>
<new>
<file> ...
darcs revert
[file|directory]...
darcs unrevert
darcs whatsnew
[file|directory]...
darcs record
[file|directory]...
darcs unrecord
darcs amend-record
[file|directory]...
darcs mark-conflicts
darcs tag
[tagname]
darcs setpref
<pref>
<value>
darcs diff
[file|directory]...
darcs changes
[file|directory]...
darcs annotate
[file|directory]...
darcs dist
darcs test
darcs trackdown
[[initialization]
command]
darcs show contents
[file]...
darcs show files
[file|directory]...
darcs show index
darcs show pristine
darcs show repo
darcs show authors
darcs show tags
darcs pull
[repository]...
darcs fetch
[repository]...
darcs obliterate
darcs rollback
[file|directory]...
darcs push
[repository]
darcs send
[repository]
darcs apply
<patchfile>
darcs get
<repository>
[<directory>]
darcs put
<new repository>
darcs initialize
darcs optimize
darcs check
darcs repair
darcs convert
<source>
[<destination>]
DESCRIPTION
Darcs is a free, open source revision control system. It is:- •
- Distributed: Every user has access to the full command set, removing boundaries between server and client or committer and non-committers.
- •
- Interactive: Darcs is easy to learn and efficient to use because it asks you questions in response to simple commands, giving you choices in your work flow. You can choose to record one change in a file, while ignoring another. As you update from upstream, you can review each patch name, even the full `diff' for interesting patches.
- •
- Smart: Originally developed by physicist David Roundy, darcs is based on a unique algebra of patches. This smartness lets you respond to changing demands in ways that would otherwise not be possible. Learn more about spontaneous branches with darcs.
OPTIONS
Different options are accepted by different Darcs commands. Each command's most important options are listed in the COMMANDS section. For a full list of all options accepted by a particular command, run `darcs command --help'.Selecting Patches:
The --patches option yields patches with names matching an `extended' regular expression. See regex(7) for details. The --matches option yields patches that match a logical (Boolean) expression: one or more primitive expressions combined by grouping (parentheses) and the complement (not), conjunction (and) and disjunction (or) operators. The C notation for logic operators (!, && and ||) can also be used.
The following primitive Boolean expressions are supported:
Here are some examples:
When an existing project is first imported into a Darcs repository, it
is common to run `darcs add -r *' or `darcs record -l' to add all
initial source files into darcs.
Adding symbolic links (symlinks) is not supported.
Darcs will ignore all files and folders that look `boring'. The
--boring option overrides this behaviour.
Darcs will not add file if another file in the same folder has the
same name, except for case. The --case-ok option overrides this
behaviour. Windows and OS X usually use filesystems that do not allow
files a folder to have the same name except for case (for example,
`ReadMe' and `README'). If --case-ok is used, the repository might be
unusable on those systems!
Note that applying a removal patch to a repository (e.g. by pulling
the patch) will ALWAYS affect the working tree of that repository.
Darcs will not rename a file if another file in the same folder has
the same name, except for case. The --case-ok option overrides this
behaviour. Windows and OS X usually use filesystems that do not allow
files a folder to have the same name except for case (for example,
`ReadMe' and `README'). If --case-ok is used, the repository might be
unusable on those systems!
Files are tokenized according to one simple rule: words are strings of
valid token characters, and everything between them (punctuation and
whitespace) is discarded. By default, valid token characters are
letters, numbers and the underscore (i.e. [A-Za-z0-9_]). However if
the old and/or new token contains either a hyphen or period, BOTH
hyphen and period are treated as valid (i.e. [A-Za-z0-9_.-]).
The set of valid characters can be customized using the --token-chars
option. The argument must be surrounded by square brackets. If a
hyphen occurs between two characters in the set, it is treated as a
set range. For example, in most locales [A-Z] denotes all uppercase
letters. If the first character is a caret, valid tokens are taken to
be the complement of the remaining characters. For example, [^:\n]
could be used to match fields in the passwd(5), where records and
fields are separated by newlines and colons respectively.
If you choose to use --token-chars, you are STRONGLY encouraged to do
so consistently. The consequences of using multiple replace patches
with different --token-chars arguments on the same file are not well
tested nor well understood.
By default Darcs will refuse to perform a replacement if the new token
is already in use, because the replacements would be not be
distinguishable from the existing tokens. This behaviour can be
overridden by supplying the --force option, but an attempt to `darcs
rollback' the resulting patch will affect these existing tokens.
Limitations:
The tokenizer treats files as byte strings, so it is not possible for
--token-chars to include multi-byte characters, such as the non-ASCII
parts of UTF-8. Similarly, trying to replace a `high-bit' character
from a unibyte encoding will also result in replacement of the same
byte in files with different encodings. For example, an acute a from
ISO 8859-1 will also match an alpha from ISO 8859-7.
Due to limitations in the patch file format, --token-chars arguments
cannot contain literal whitespace. For example, [^ \n\t] cannot be
used to declare all characters except the space, tab and newline as
valid within a word, because it contains a literal space.
Unlike POSIX regex(7) bracket expressions, character classes (such as
[[:alnum:]]) are NOT supported by --token-chars, and will be silently
treated as a simple set of characters.
In you accidentally reverted something you wanted to keep (for
example, typing `darcs rev -a' instead of `darcs rec -a'), you can
immediately run `darcs unrevert' to restore it. This is only
guaranteed to work if the repository has not changed since `darcs
revert' ran.
This command may fail if the repository has changed since the revert
took place. Darcs will ask for confirmation before executing an
interactive command that will DEFINITELY prevent unreversion.
With the --summary option, the changes are condensed to one line per
file, with mnemonics to indicate the nature and extent of the change.
The --look-for-adds option causes candidates for `darcs add' to be
included in the summary output. Summary mnemonics are as follows:
By default, `darcs whatsnew' uses Darcs' internal format for changes.
To see some context (unchanged lines) around each change, use the
--unified option. To view changes in conventional `diff' format, use
the `darcs diff' command; but note that `darcs whatsnew' is faster.
This command exits unsuccessfully (returns a non-zero exit status) if
there are no unrecorded changes.
Every patch has a name, an optional description, an author and a date.
The patch name should be a short sentence that concisely describes the
patch, such as `Add error handling to main event loop.' You can
supply it in advance with the -m option, or provide it when prompted.
The patch description is an optional block of free-form text. It is
used to supply additional information that doesn't fit in the patch
name. For example, it might include a rationale of WHY the change was
necessary. By default Darcs asks if you want to add a description;
the --edit-long-comment and --skip-long-comment can be used to answer
`yes' or `no' (respectively) to this prompt. Finally, the --logfile
option allows you to supply a file that already contains the patch
name (first line) and patch description (subsequent lines). This is
useful if a previous record failed and left a darcs-record-0 file.
Each patch is attributed to its author, usually by email address (for
example, `Fred Bloggs <fred [at] example.net>'). Darcs looks in several
places for this author string: the --author option, the files
_darcs/prefs/author (in the repository) and ~/.darcs/author (in your
home directory), and the environment variables $DARCS_EMAIL and
$EMAIL. If none of those exist, Darcs will prompt you for an author
string and write it to _darcs/prefs/author. Note that if if you have more
than one email address, note that you can put them all in ~/.darcs/author,
one author per line. Darcs will still prompt you for an author, but it
allows you to select from the list, or to type in an alternative.
The patch date is generated automatically. It can only be spoofed by
using the --pipe option.
If a test command has been defined with `darcs setpref', attempting to
record a patch will cause the test command to be run in a clean copy
of the working tree (that is, including only recorded changes). If
the test fails, you will be offered to abort the record operation.
The --set-scripts-executable option causes scripts to be made
executable in the clean copy of the working tree, prior to running the
test. See `darcs get' for an explanation of the script heuristic.
If your test command is tediously slow (e.g. `make all') and you are
recording several patches in a row, you may wish to use --no-test to
skip all but the final test.
To see some context (unchanged lines) around each change, use the
--unified option.
Do not copy draft patches between repositories, because a finished
patch cannot be copied into a repository that contains a draft of the
same patch. If this has already happened, `darcs obliterate' can be
used to remove the draft patch.
Do not run amend-record in repository that other developers can pull
from, because if they pull while an amend-record is in progress, their
repository may be corrupted.
When recording a draft patch, it is a good idea to start the name with
`DRAFT:' so that other developers know it is not finished. When
finished, remove it with `darcs amend-record --edit-long-comment'.
To change the patch name without starting an editor, use --patch-name.
Like `darcs record', if you call amend-record with files as arguments,
you will only be asked about changes to those files. So to amend a
patch to foo.c with improvements in bar.c, you would run:
It is usually a bad idea to amend another developer's patch. To make
amend-record only ask about your own patches by default, you can add
something like `amend-record match David Roundy' to ~/.darcs/defaults,
where `David Roundy' is your name.
v v v v v v v
Initial state.
=============
First choice.
*************
Second choice.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
However, you might revert or manually delete these markers without
actually resolving the conflict. In this case, `darcs mark-conflicts'
is useful to show where any unresolved conflicts. It is also useful
if `darcs apply' is called with --apply-conflicts, where conflicts
aren't marked initially.
Any unrecorded changes to the working tree WILL be lost forever when
you run this command! You will be prompted for confirmation before
this takes place.
To reproduce the state of a repository `R' as at tag `t', use the
command `darcs get --tag t R'. The command `darcs show tags' lists
all tags in the current repository.
Tagging also provides significant performance benefits: when Darcs
reaches a shared tag that depends on all antecedent patches, it can
simply stop processing.
Like normal patches, a tag has a name, an author, a timestamp and an
optional long description, but it does not change the working tree.
A tag can have any name, but it is generally best to pick a naming
scheme and stick to it.
The `darcs tag' command accepts the --pipe option, which behaves as
described in `darcs record'.
Valid preferences are:
For example, a project using GNU autotools, with a `make test' target
to perform regression tests, might enable Darcs' integrated regression
testing with the following command:
Note that merging is not currently implemented for preferences: if two
patches attempt to set the same preference, the last patch applied to
the repository will always take precedence. This is considered a
low-priority bug, because preferences are seldom set.
With the --patch option, the comparison will be made between working
trees with and without that patch. Patches `after' the selected patch
are not present in either of the compared working trees. The
--from-patch and --to-patch options allow the set of patches in the
`old' and `new' working trees to be specified separately.
The associated tag and match options are also understood, e.g. `darcs
diff --from-tag 1.0 --to-tag 1.1'. All these options assume an
ordering of the patch set, so results may be affected by operations
such as `darcs optimize --reorder'.
diff(1) is called with the arguments -rN. The --unified option causes
-u to be passed to diff(1). An additional argument can be passed
using --diff-opts, such as --diff-opts=-ud or --diff-opts=-wU9.
The --diff-command option can be used to specify an alternative
utility, such as meld (GNOME) or opendiff (OS X). Arguments may be
included, separated by whitespace. The value is not interpreted by a
shell, so shell constructs cannot be used. The arguments %1 and %2
MUST be included, these are substituted for the two working trees
being compared. If this option is used, --diff-opts is ignored.
When given one or more files or directories as arguments, only
patches which affect those files or directories are listed. This
includes changes that happened to files before they were moved or
renamed.
When given a --from-tag, --from-patch or --from-match, only changes
since that tag or patch are listed. Similarly, the --to-tag,
--to-patch and --to-match options restrict the list to older patches.
The --last and --max-count options both limit the number of patches
listed. The former applies BEFORE other filters, whereas the latter
applies AFTER other filters. For example `darcs changes foo.c
--max-count 3' will print the last three patches that affect foo.c,
whereas `darcs changes --last 3 foo.c' will, of the last three
patches, print only those that affect foo.c.
Three output formats exist. The default is --human-readable. You can
also select --context, which is the internal format (as seen in patch
bundles) that can be re-read by Darcs (e.g. `darcs get --context').
Finally, there is --xml-output, which emits valid XML... unless a the
patch metadata (author, name or description) contains a non-ASCII
character and was recorded in a non-UTF8 locale.
Note that while the --context flag may be used in conjunction with
--xml-output or --human-readable, in neither case will darcs get be
able to read the output. On the other hand, sufficient information
WILL be output for a knowledgeable human to recreate the current state
of the repository.
The --summary option will result in a summarized patch annotation,
similar to `darcs whatsnew'. It has no effect on file annotations.
By default, output is in a human-readable format. The --machine-readable
option can be used to generate output for machine postprocessing.
If a predist command is set (see `darcs setpref'), that command will
be run on the tarball contents prior to archiving. For example,
autotools projects would set it to `autoconf && automake'.
By default, the tarball (and the top-level directory within the
tarball) has the same name as the repository, but this can be
overridden with the --dist-name option.
Without the --bisect option, trackdown does linear search starting from head,
and moving away from head. With the --bisect option, it does binary search.
Under the assumption that failure is monotonous, trackdown produces
the same result with and without --bisect. (Monotonous means that when
moving away from head, the test result changes only once from "fail" to "ok".)
If failure is not monotonous, any one of the patches that break the test is
found at random.
A file is `pending' if it has been added but not recorded. By
default, pending files (and directories) are listed; the --no-pending
option prevents this.
By default `darcs show files' lists both files and directories, but
the alias `darcs show manifest' only lists files. The --files,
--directories, --no-files and --no-directories modify this behaviour.
By default entries are one-per-line (i.e. newline separated). This
can cause problems if the files themselves contain newlines or other
control characters. To get aroudn this, the --null option uses the
null character instead. The script interpreting output from this
command needs to understand this idiom; `xargs -0' is such a command.
For example, to list version-controlled files by size:
By default, the number of patches is shown. If this data isn't
needed, use --no-files to accelerate this command from O(n) to O(1).
By default, output is in a human-readable format. The --xml-output
option can be used to generate output for machine postprocessing.
An author's name or email address may change over time. To tell Darcs
when multiple author strings refer to the same individual, create an
`.authorspellings' file in the root of the working tree. Each line in
this file begins with an author's canonical name and address, and may
be followed by a comma separated list of extended regular expressions.
Blank lines and lines beginning with two hyphens are ignored.
The format of .authorspelling can be described by this pattern:
There are some pitfalls concerning special characters:
Whitespaces are stripped, if you need space in regexp use [ ].
Because comma serves as a separator you have to escape it if you want
it in regexp. Note that .authorspelingfile use extended regular
expressions so +, ? and so on are metacharacters and you need to
escape them to be interpreted literally.
Any patch with an author string that matches the canonical address or
any of the associated regexps is considered to be the work of that
author. All matching is case-insensitive and partial (it can match a
substring). Use ^,$ to match the whole string in regexps
Currently this canonicalization step is done only in `darcs show
authors'. Other commands, such as `darcs changes' use author strings
verbatim.
An example .authorspelling file is:
Tab characters (ASCII character 9) in tag names are changed to spaces
for better interoperability with shell tools. A warning is printed if
this happens.
See 'darcs help apply' for detailed description of many options.
If no file is supplied, the bundle is read from standard input.
If given an email instead of a patch bundle, Darcs will look for the
bundle as a MIME attachment to that email. Currently this will fail
if the MIME boundary is rewritten, such as in Courier and Mail.app.
If the `--reply noreply [at] example.net' option is used, and the bundle is
attached to an email, Darcs will send a report (indicating success or
failure) to the sender of the bundle (the To field). The argument to
noreply is the address the report will appear to originate FROM.
The --cc option will cause the report to be CC'd to another address,
for example `--cc reports [at] lists.example.net,admin [at] lists.example.net'.
Using --cc without --reply is undefined.
If gpg(1) is installed, you can use `--verify pubring.gpg' to reject
bundles that aren't signed by a key in pubring.gpg.
If --test is supplied and a test is defined (see `darcs setpref'), the
bundle will be rejected if the test fails after applying it. In that
case, the rejection email from --reply will include the test output.
A patch bundle may introduce unresolved conflicts with existing
patches or with the working tree. By default, Darcs will add conflict
markers (see `darcs mark-conflicts').
The --external-merge option lets you resolve these conflicts
using an external merge tool. In the option, '%a' is replaced with
the common ancestor (merge base), '%1' with the first version, '%2'
with the second version, and '%o' with the path where your resolved
content should go. For example, to use the xxdiff visual merge tool
you'd specify: --external-merge='xxdiff -m -O -M %o %1 %a %2'
The --allow-conflicts option will skip conflict marking; this is
useful when you want to treat a repository as just a bunch of patches,
such as using `darcs pull --union' to download of your co-workers
patches before going offline.
This can mess up unrecorded changes in the working tree, forcing you
to resolve the conflict immediately. To simply reject bundles that
introduce unresolved conflicts, using the --dont-allow-conflicts
option. Making this the default in push-based workflows is strongly
recommended.
Unlike most Darcs commands, `darcs apply' defaults to --all. Use the
--interactive option to pick which patches to apply from a bundle.
By default Darcs will copy every patch from the original repository.
This means the copy is completely independent of the original; you can
operate on the new repository even when the original is inaccessible.
If you expect the original repository to remain accessible, you can
use --lazy to avoid copying patches until they are needed (`copy on
demand'). This is particularly useful when copying a remote
repository with a long history that you don't care about.
The --lazy option isn't as useful for local copies, because Darcs will
automatically use `hard linking' where possible. As well as saving
time and space, you can move or delete the original repository without
affecting a complete, hard-linked copy. Hard linking requires that
the copy be on the same filesystem and the original repository, and
that the filesystem support hard linking. This includes NTFS, HFS+
and all general-purpose Unix filesystems (such as ext3, UFS and ZFS).
FAT does not support hard links.
Darcs get will not copy unrecorded changes to the source repository's
working tree.
It is often desirable to make a copy of a repository that excludes
some patches. For example, if releases are tagged then `darcs get
--tag .' would make a copy of the repository as at the latest release.
An untagged repository state can still be identified unambiguously by
a context file, as generated by `darcs changes --context'. Given the
name of such a file, the --context option will create a repository
that includes only the patches from that context. When a user reports
a bug in an unreleased version of your project, the recommended way to
find out exactly what version they were running is to have them
include a context file in the bug report.
You can also make a copy of an untagged state using the --to-patch or
--to-match options, which exclude patches `after' the first matching
patch. Because these options treat the set of patches as an ordered
sequence, you may get different results after reordering with `darcs
optimize', so tagging is preferred.
Currently this command just uses `darcs init' to create the target
repository, then `darcs push --all' to copy patches to it. Options
passed to `darcs put' are passed to the init and/or push commands as
appropriate. See those commands for an explanation of each option.
This command creates the `_darcs' directory, which stores version
control metadata. It also contains per-repository settings in
_darcs/prefs/, which you can read about in the user manual.
By default, patches of the new repository are in the darcs-2 semantics.
However it is possible to create a repository in darcs-1 semantics with
the flag `--hashed', althought this is not recommended except for sharing
patches with a project that uses patches in the darcs-1 semantics.
Initialize is commonly abbreviated to `init'.
The default optimization moves recent patches (those not included in
the latest tag) to the `front', reducing the amount that a typical
remote command needs to download. It should also reduce the CPU time
needed for some operations.
The `darcs optimize --relink' command hard-links patches that the
current repository has in common with its peers. Peers are those
repositories listed in _darcs/prefs/sources, or defined with the
`--sibling' option (which can be used multiple times).
Darcs uses hard-links automatically, so this command is rarely needed.
It is most useful if you used `cp -r' instead of `darcs get' to copy a
repository, or if you pulled the same patch from a remote repository
into multiple local repositories.
By default patches are compressed with zlib (RFC 1951) to reduce
storage (and download) size. In exceptional circumstances, it may be
preferable to avoid compression. In this case the `--dont-compress'
option can be used (e.g. with `darcs record') to avoid compression.
The `darcs optimize --uncompress' and `darcs optimize --compress'
commands can be used to ensure existing patches in the current
repository are respectively uncompressed or compressed. Note that
repositories in the legacy `old-fashioned-inventory' format have a .gz
extension on patch files even when uncompressed.
There is one more optimization which CAN NOT be performed by this
command. Every time your record a patch, a new inventory file is
written to _darcs/inventories/, and old inventories are never reaped.
If _darcs/inventories/ is consuming a relatively large amount of
space, you can safely reclaim it by using `darcs get' to make a
complete copy of the repo. When doing so, don't forget to copy over
any unsaved changes you have made to the working tree or to
unversioned files in _darcs/prefs/ (such as _darcs/prefs/author).
If a regression test is defined (see `darcs setpref') it will be run
by `darcs check'. Use the --no-test option to disable this.
This command DOES NOT modify the source repository; a new destination
repository is created. It is safe to run this command more than once
on a repository (e.g. for testing), before the final conversion.
WARNING: the repository produced by this command is not understood by
Darcs 1.x, and patches cannot be exchanged between repositories in
darcs-1 and darcs-2 formats.
Furthermore, darcs 2 repositories created by different invocations of
this command SHOULD NOT exchange patches, unless those repositories
had no patches in common when they were converted. (That is, within a
set of repos that exchange patches, no patch should be converted more
than once.)
Due to this limitation, migrating a multi-branch project is a little
awkward. Sorry! Here is the recommended process:
The environment variable $DARCS_SSH can be used to specify an
alternative SSH client. Arguments may be included, separated by
whitespace. The value is not interpreted by a shell, so shell
constructs cannot be used; in particular, it is not possible for the
program name to contain whitespace by using quoting or escaping.
If transfer-mode fails, Darcs will fall back on scp(1) and sftp(1).
The commands invoked can be customized with the environment variables
$DARCS_SCP and $DARCS_SFTP respectively, which behave like $DARCS_SSH.
If the remote end allows only sftp, try setting DARCS_SCP=sftp.
In which case libcurl will use the proxy for the associated protocol
(HTTP, HTTPS and FTP). The environment variable ALL_PROXY can be used
to set a single proxy for all libcurl requests.
If the environment variable NO_PROXY is a comma-separated list of host
names, access to those hosts will bypass proxies defined by the above
variables. For example, it is quite common to avoid proxying requests
to machines on the local network with
For compatibility with lynx et al, lowercase equivalents of these
environment variables (e.g. $http_proxy) are also understood and are
used in preference to the uppercase versions.
If Darcs was not built with libcurl, all these environment variables
are silently ignored, and there is no way to use a web proxy.
Blank lines, and lines beginning with an octothorpe (#) are ignored.
See regex(7) for a description of extended regular expressions.
Blank lines, and lines beginning with an octothorpe (#) are ignored.
See regex(7) for a description of extended regular expressions.
COMMANDS
darcs help
[<darcs_command> [darcs_subcommand]]
Changing and querying the working copy:
darcs add
<file|directory> ...
darcs remove
<file|directory> ...
darcs move
<source> ... <destination>
darcs replace
<old>
<new>
<file> ...
darcs revert
[file|directory]...
darcs unrevert
darcs whatsnew
[file|directory]...
Copying changes between the working copy and the repository:
darcs record
[file|directory]...
darcs unrecord
darcs amend-record
[file|directory]...
darcs mark-conflicts
Direct modification of the repository:
darcs tag
[tagname]
darcs setpref
<pref>
<value>
Querying the repository:
darcs diff
[file|directory]...
darcs changes
[file|directory]...
darcs annotate
[file|directory]...
darcs dist
darcs test
darcs trackdown
[[initialization]
command]
darcs show contents
[file]...
darcs show files
[file|directory]...
darcs show index
darcs show pristine
darcs show repo
darcs show authors
darcs show tags
Copying patches between repositories with working copy update:
darcs pull
[repository]...
darcs fetch
[repository]...
darcs obliterate
darcs rollback
[file|directory]...
darcs push
[repository]
darcs send
[repository]
darcs apply
<patchfile>
darcs get
<repository>
[<directory>]
darcs put
<new repository>
Administrating repositories:
darcs initialize
darcs optimize
darcs check
darcs repair
darcs convert
<source>
[<destination>]
ENVIRONMENT
HOME and APPDATA
Per-user preferences are set in $HOME/.darcs (on Unix) or
%APPDATA%/darcs (on Windows). This is also the default location of
the cache.
DARCS_EDITOR, DARCSEDITOR, VISUAL and EDITOR
To edit a patch description of email comment, Darcs will invoke an
external editor. Your preferred editor can be set as any of the
environment variables $DARCS_EDITOR, $DARCSEDITOR, $VISUAL or $EDITOR.
If none of these are set, vi(1) is used. If vi crashes or is not
found in your PATH, emacs, emacs -nw, nano and (on Windows) edit are
each tried in turn.
DARCS_PAGER and PAGER
Darcs will sometimes invoke a pager if it deems output to be too long
to fit onscreen. Darcs will use the pager specified by $DARCS_PAGER
or $PAGER. If neither are set, `less' will be used.
DARCS_TMPDIR and TMPDIR
Darcs often creates temporary directories. For example, the `darcs
diff' command creates two for the working trees to be diffed. By
default temporary directories are created in /tmp, or if that doesn't
exist, in _darcs (within the current repo). This can be overridden by
specifying some other directory in the file _darcs/prefs/tmpdir or the
environment variable $DARCS_TMPDIR or $TMPDIR.
DARCS_KEEP_TMPDIR
If the environment variable DARCS_KEEP_TMPDIR is defined, darcs will
not remove the temporary directories it creates. This is intended
primarily for debugging Darcs itself, but it can also be useful, for
example, to determine why your test preference (see `darcs setpref')
is failing when you run `darcs record', but working when run manually.
DARCS_EMAIL and EMAIL
Each patch is attributed to its author, usually by email address (for
example, `Fred Bloggs <fred [at] example.net>'). Darcs looks in several
places for this author string: the --author option, the files
_darcs/prefs/author (in the repository) and ~/.darcs/author (in your
home directory), and the environment variables $DARCS_EMAIL and
$EMAIL. If none of those exist, Darcs will prompt you for an author
string and write it to _darcs/prefs/author. Note that if if you have more
than one email address, note that you can put them all in ~/.darcs/author,
one author per line. Darcs will still prompt you for an author, but it
allows you to select from the list, or to type in an alternative.
SENDMAIL
On Unix, the `darcs send' command relies on sendmail(8). The
`--sendmail-command' or $SENDMAIL environment variable can be used to
provide an explicit path to this program; otherwise the standard
locations /usr/sbin/sendmail and /usr/lib/sendmail will be tried.
DARCS_SSH
Repositories of the form [user@]host:[dir] are taken to be remote
repositories, which Darcs accesses with the external program ssh(1).
DARCS_SCP and DARCS_SFTP
When reading from a remote repository, Darcs will attempt to run
`darcs transfer-mode' on the remote host. This will fail if the
remote host only has Darcs 1 installed, doesn't have Darcs installed
at all, or only allows SFTP.
SSH_PORT
If this environment variable is set, it will be used as the port
number for all SSH calls made by Darcs (when accessing remote
repositories over SSH). This is useful if your SSH server does not
run on the default port, and your SSH client does not support
ssh_config(5). OpenSSH users will probably prefer to put something
like `Host *.example.net Port 443' into their ~/.ssh/config file.
HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, FTP_PROXY, ALL_PROXY and NO_PROXY
If Darcs was built with libcurl, the environment variables HTTP_PROXY,
HTTPS_PROXY and FTP_PROXY can be set to the URL of a proxy in the form
DARCS_PROXYUSERPWD
If Darcs was built with libcurl, and you are using a web proxy that
requires authentication, you can set the $DARCS_PROXYUSERPWD
environment variable to the username and password expected by the
proxy, separated by a colon. This environment variable is silently
ignored if Darcs was not built with libcurl.
FILES
_darcs/prefs/binaries
This file contains a list of extended regular expressions, one per
line. A file path matching any of these expressions is assumed to
contain binary data (not text). The entries in ~/.darcs/binaries (if
it exists) supplement those in this file.
_darcs/prefs/boring
This file contains a list of extended regular expressions, one per
line. A file path matching any of these expressions will be filtered
out during `darcs add', or when the `--look-for-adds' flag is passed
to `darcs whatsnew' and `record'. The entries in ~/.darcs/boring (if
it exists) supplement those in this file.
BUGS
At http://bugs.darcs.net/ you can find a list of known
bugs in Darcs. Unknown bugs can be reported at that
site (after creating an account) or by emailing the
report to bugs [at] darcs.net.
LICENSE
Darcs is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.
SEE ALSO
A user manual is included with Darcs, in PDF and HTML
form. It can also be found at http://darcs.net/manual/.