This page describes possible work on ressurecting the built-in
wxHaskell graphical interface for Darcs.

[[`TableOfContents <TableOfContents>`_([2])]]

Why a graphical interface?
--------------------------


-  It may be easier for newbies
-  It may provide powerful functionality that would be inconvenient
   with the command-line interface

Current projects
----------------

There are three students of the
`BTU Cottbus <http://www.tu-cottbus.de/btu/en.html>`_ working on a
new darcs GUI application based on the
`Grapefruit <http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Grapefruit>`_ FRP
library. They are supervised by Wolfgang Jeltsch.

GUI ideas
---------


-  a patch dependency visualiser
-  an iTunes-like interface to patches (click on the 'author'
   column, and you see the patches sorted by author, for example)
-  click on a patch and you get some subtle feedback on all the
   patches it depends on (for example, they change colour)
-  maybe some kind of help resolving conflicts? (no clear ideas)
-  A file browser that highlights files not added to the
   repository, files that have unrecorded changes, etc.
-  Diff visualisation
-  MacOS X - integration with `FileMerge <FileMerge>`_?
-  a generic diff visualiser, which would allow to pick-and-choose
   lines of code into a third file, a la Visual Source Safe and the
   open-source `kdiff3 <http://kdiff3.sourceforge.net/>`_.
-  There should be two ways to use the darcs gui. One is to have a
   seperate gui for each command, so that you can run something like
   ``darcs whatsnew -gui``. The other is to have a standalone gui.
-  The standalone gui could take a patch-oriented view towards
   repositories, rather than a task oriented one. That is, rather than
   decide you want to record some patches and then select the patches
   (for instance), you select a bunch of patches and decide you want
   to record them. (This is inspired from one of the patchworks'
   screenshots)

TODO
~~~~


-  File selection: add, remove, move (this requires some thought) -
   *not implemented*
-  Replace - *not implemented*
-  Set pref - *not implemented*
-  Repository selection - *not implemented* (for standalone gui
   only)
-  Select a repository - should be able to type in a repository
   path (remote), or use file dialogue to select a local one, or
   choose from \_darcs/prefs/repositories
-  Interaction with SSH - password or passphrase, maybe ssh-agent
-  Radio buttons for multi-record selection (pending also Ganesh
   looking into multi-record)

Implementation ideas
--------------------


-  Implement a darcs --gui flag that launches a standalone darcs
   gui. Make darcs run as if it had the darcs --gui flag if it is
   called as darcsGui (this will be useful for the double-clickable
   executable). Not that the darcs --gui flag is not the same as the
   --gui flag for arguments.
-  We look into Blobs as a graphical tool for visualising patch
   dependencies

Things we could use...
----------------------


-  A gui branch of darcs (somebody just needs to set this up on a
   server somewhere)
-  A mailing list so that we don't annoy everybody on darcs-users
   or darcs-devel?
-  Some people interested in hacking on this?

See also
--------


-  `http://patchworks.counsell.org <http://patchworks.counsell.org>`_
   (Mac OS X) - Jonathon Mah and Tom Counsell; Very alpha, but can
   show whatsnew, and record or revert groups of hunks by drag and
   drop.
-  `http://eclipsedarcs.org/ <http://eclipsedarcs.org/>`_ - Eclipse
   plugin for Darcs
-  `http://tortoisedarcs.sourceforge.net <http://tortoisedarcs.sourceforge.net>`_
   (Windows) - Windows GUI for Darcs.