I installed Darcs a few days ago and have a doubt. I am the only programmer and I usually work on two or three instances of the application, making new feautures. The problems cames because this instances modify the same source code file, so when I finished them and send to main repository they make a conflict. Is there any way to deal with this? Can I write the same file in multiple instances without making conflict when pushing to main repository? thanks
+2
A:
First of all when changes occurs at different places of the file there is generally no conflicts when merging. When two patches can be merged without conflicts one says that they commute. In your case it happens that you've modified the same part of the file in two different branches. In this case darcs don't allow you to "push" the second patch that makes the conflict.
There is two ways to resolve such a confilct, but you have to start to locally merge the both patches to get the conflict in your working repo. To do this just pull the patches from the main repository. Then you have to edit the offended file and resolve the conflict.
The first way is simple and the prefered solution, you have to "amend-record" the patch that is not yet on the main repository (look at the usage of the "darcs amend-record" command).
The other solution is to record a resolution patch, by calling "darcs record" and then pushing both the conflicting patch and the resolution patch. This solution tends to complicate the history and can make some later operations longer. However when the branch has been heavily distributed this solution becomes needed.