darcs2bzr using tailor

Disclaimer: I’m not a software developer. Just trying to learn as much programming as I need

From time to time, I write some short programs, mostly to handle otherwise annoying tasks, or for hacking’s sake. Even though I never reach a mature application state, I like to keep track of development using revision control systems.

For two Python apps I’m writing, I started using darcs as RCS. Then the summer came and I had no time to hack on them for some months. Now I have discovered bzr, which looks better and has many plugins.

Switching from one RCS to another could sound as a painful task, but not when you discover tailor. Tailor knows almost all RCSs and can convert between them. I have to admit that it hasn’t been easy at all to understand how exactly the configfile should look like, and where it should be put and so on. Here’s what I’ve done:

1. your darcs-managed project is in ~/code/project
2. your new bzr project will be created in ~/code/project-bzr, so create this directory
3. cd into ~/code/project-bzr directory and create a file yourproject.tailor
4. the contents of the yourproject.tailor file should look like this:

   [DEFAULT]
   verbose = True
   
   [project]
   target = bzr:target
   start-revision = INITIAL
   state-file = tailor.state
   source = darcs:source
   
   [bzr:target]
   
   
   [darcs:source]
   repository = /home/user/code/project/

5. Now, from the destination directory, run tailor --configfile yourproject.tailor. The destination directory should be populated with the bzr version of your repository.
6. check with bzr log whether the conversion was really succesful
7. (re)start writing code. Happy hacking!