I have a 52mb patch that's in the live repository and I *dont* want it in my
local repository.  (it's a whole load of media files that are not being used
yet, will only get included in actual releases in a few versions downstream).

I pay quite heavily per mb for my internet connection at home, and having to sit
through it downloading that entire patch every time i try pull *other* patches
seems quite strange.

This sounds like it's almost unavoidable.  If that patch comes before the
patches that you do want in the other repository, you need to commute them
by it.  This could be alleviated by the hashed inventory idea, which would
allow darcs to keep a cache of patches that have been downloaded before, so
you'd only have to download that large patch once (unless you cleared out
the cache).

If the unwanted patch was last in the repository *then* you shouldn't need
to download it (except if you say "no" to another patch, in which case
darcs needs to download the big one to see if it should prompt you for
it).
-- 
David Roundy

This would also be alleviated by a proper darcs server that can do commutes on
behalf of the client.

On Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 08:53:46PM +0000, JP Sugarbroad wrote:
> This would also be alleviated by a proper darcs server that can do
> commutes on behalf of the client.

Yes.
-- 
David Roundy
http://www.darcs.net

David,

Is this sufficiently resolved with the new repo formats and the global cache?

Yes, I think this is alleviated.  The user only needs to download the patch
once--actually, even without a global cache--so I think the original issue is
solved.

David