Folks:

I ran "darcs get --help" and it suggested that I could use the option  
"--darcs-2" to make the resulting repo be in the latest and greatest  
format.

So I ran "darcs get --debug-verbose --verbose --darcs-2 tahoe tahoe- 
darcs-2" on my Mac, and it took a long time and then said that it had  
succeeded.  Then I ran the same command-line on my Windows laptop,  
and it said "darcs failed:  Incompatibility with repository BLAHBLAH:  
CAnnot mix darcs-2 repositories with older formats.".

So the I explored _darcs on my Mac and found that tahoe-darcs-2/ 
_darcs/format contains "darcs-1.0".

Then I looked at the wiki and it said that to convert from old to new  
I should run "darcs convert oldrepository newrepository".

So now I'm pretty confused.  Maybe the "--darcs-2" option to the  
"get" command shouldn't exist at all?

Regards,

Zooko

Yes, I think your final conclusion that get shouldn't have a --darcs-2 option is
correct.

David

> Yes, I think your final conclusion that get shouldn't have a --darcs-2 option is
> correct.

Has the opposite been considered: Removing "darcs convert" in favor "darcs get
--darcs2" ? Since "darcs convert" doesn't do an in-place change, it essentially
the same as "darcs get" in some ways. I see arguments for either direction.

>> Yes, I think your final conclusion that get shouldn't have a -- 
>> darcs-2 option is
>> correct.
>
> Has the opposite been considered: Removing "darcs convert" in favor  
> "darcs get
> --darcs2" ? Since "darcs convert" doesn't do an in-place change, it  
> essentially
> the same as "darcs get" in some ways. I see arguments for either  
> direction.

I would vote for "darcs get --darcs-2" instead of "darcs convert",  
but either one would be okay with me.

--Z

> Has the opposite been considered: Removing "darcs convert" in favor "darcs get
> --darcs2" ? Since "darcs convert" doesn't do an in-place change, it essentially
> the same as "darcs get" in some ways. I see arguments for either direction.

I have an argument against. A darcs-1 -> darcs-2 conversion must
be done once and only once. Darcs users are used to "darcs get"
and "rm -rf" darcs repos all the time, and someone will at some
point get confused, or worse, because if you "get --darcs-2 foo"
twice (from two different copies of foo, or reorder foo in
between) you will get two unbased darcs-2 repos.

I'm pushing a fix for this which removes the --darcs-2 flag from get.  I think
that the issue of convert being something that must be used only once for a
given repository group is confusing enough I'd like to avoid making it easy to
mistakenly convert repositories.