I did a binary search on Will Glozer's daily builds to try to pin point when
this regression occurred.  Here's what I found: the 2005.08.31 build works and
the 2005.09.20 build (and all subsequent ones) fail in the same way.  The
working case looks like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\zooko\Desktop\t\dw32pack\darcsdir-w32>darcs get -v -v
-v -v zooko@yumyum.zooko.com:/home/zooko/dtest
darcs7e327b               |          0 kB |   0.0 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100%
Getting the inventory...
Copying patches...
Changing to: /home/zooko/
sftp> cd /home/zooko/dtest/_darcs/patches
sftp> get 20051119013009-5bb19-6b6176d1f9f5f40eb41237488b35edf61665053f.gz
Fetching /home/zooko/dtest/_darcs/patches/20051119013009-5bb19-6b6176d1f9f5f40eb
41237488b35edf61665053f.gz to 20051119013009-5bb19-6b6176d1f9f5f40eb41237488b35e
df61665053f.gz
Patches copied
Repo lazily read
Repo local: "False"
Applying patch 1 of 1: Fri Nov 18 17:30:09 Pacific Standard Time 2005  dtest
  * whee
Writing the pristine
Syncing the repository...
Repository synced, going to chosen version...
Finished getting.

The failing case looks like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\zooko\Desktop\t\dw32pack\darcsdir-w32>darcs get -v -v
-v -v zooko@yumyum.zooko.com:/home/zooko/dtest
darcs142011               |          0 kB |   0.0 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100%
Getting the inventory...
Copying patches...
darcs: C:/Documents and Settings/zooko/Desktop/t/dw32pack/darcsdir-w32/dtest/_da
rcs/patches/darcsbd1183: removeFile: permission denied (Permission denied)

Hope this helps!  (Did temp files used to live in root and now live in
_darcs/patches/ ? ...)

Ah, the patch from Will Glozer entitled 

"fix bug where darcs tries to delete open tempfile on win32"

sounds like it will probably fix this bug.

Maybe someone could throw it into a darcs-1.0.4-brown-paper-bag-1 release?

On Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 07:57:02PM +0000, Zooko wrote:
> Ah, the patch from Will Glozer entitled 
> 
> "fix bug where darcs tries to delete open tempfile on win32"
> 
> sounds like it will probably fix this bug.

Hmm, have you tried Wills latest build on
<http://glozer.net/darcs/daily/>?  It should include that
patch.

> Maybe someone could throw it into a darcs-1.0.4-brown-paper-bag-1 release?

It's on its way. There is still issue8 "Darcs record fails
with big record on Windows" waiting for a fix. I'm totally
lame with Windows, so any help diagnosing the problem would
be much appreciated.

> Hmm, have you tried Wills latest build on
> <http://glozer.net/darcs/daily/>?  It should include that
> patch.

Yes!  It worked!

--Z