Development/Policy
Darcs is not a particularly policy-driven project; we tend to make decisions using case-by-case consensus. On the other hand, we sometimes find it helpful to maintain a small set of rules for the sake of consistency or efficiency. We will document these rules here as we grow them.
Communications
- darcs-users: all discussions (user and developer); open to all
- darcs-devel: automated traffic only (bugtracker, buildbot); open to all
- darcs-private: sensitive discussions only, to be avoided where possible; open to `darcs core team` members (see top of DarcsTeam)
Commit-bits
Rough consensus from the current pool of commit bit holders. May be revised as the pool grows. See DarcsTeam.
Contribs
We welcome small third-party tools (eg. shell completion scripts) in our contribs/
directory. Our only requirement is that they be maintained. Bugs related to a contrib script can be tracked on http://bugs.darcs.net if there is not already a tracker for them. Note that if the tool or script appears to be unmaintained - for example if we receive a bug report but get no response from the maintainer - then we reserve the right to remove it outright. Re-submissions are of course welcome when a maintainer is available.
Copyright
- Author keeps copyright
- GPL (or more liberal) for source code
- MIT for test suites
Dependencies
Libraries we depend on should be GPL-compatible. If the patch author introduce a new dependency that is not cabal installable, he or she should post a heads-up on the mailing list as this will likely break people’s builds of Darcs.
GHC and Haskell-Platform versions
We will support the last two stable branches of GHC (for which a Haskell Platform has been released).
As a reference, here are the versions provided by Ubuntu:
Concretely, we support GHC versions as old as the one provided by the current Debian stable.
Politics
Benevolent Dictator chosen by an Oversight Committee and deposed with a vote of at least 3/4 of its members.
See the SFC agreement for details (though the agreement technically only covers our relationship with the SFC, we use it as the basis for our political system)