Darcs: Double Down

There's a nice advantage to using Darcs to manage your source code: it's pretty easy to push your repositories around. With CVS, there are steps and routines for moving your files around. There are environment variables involved and everything. It's a pain in the ass.

With Codeville, you end up doing a "cdv commit" and, because of Codeville's distributed design and network-resource-based repository, you can just sit back and let the software do its thing. Sometimes, I really wish I knew more about how Codeville pushes its changes over the wire. Codeville can easily have its custom commit protocol tunneled over SSH, which is a must for anyone who cares about their data.

Darcs, on the other hand, appears to automatically use some combination of SSH and SFTP, which is almost as good. Instead of one method of copying repository changes, Darcs uses several, including good old-fashioned SMTP. The advantage of this adaptability is evidenced by the simplicity of the ability to go from zero to remote copy with one command:

$ darcs put user@remotehost:/path/to/new/repository

Combine this with an SSH key-pair and you're pretty much on Easy Street.