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You could always go back to emailing around file changes :-)

Most VCSes including git have some level of complicated algorithms behind them. Darcs does have significant weaknesses when it comes to handling conflicts but the core logic of figuring out how to apply changes to files has been pretty solid for its entire existence.

It’s the same thing that happens every time you rebase or cherry pick commits in git.

A version control system always needs to consider both, to some extent.

The difference is in which is the primary source of truth, and which is calculated when required (and then thrown away).

There are more concerns than that. In got “A -> B -> C” generates one hash, while “A -> C -> B” is a different hash. In Pijul they are the same.

This may seem trivial, but the darcs/pijul approach permits an entirely different, more distributed/decentralized development model.

Ironically a model better suited to kernel development.

It's a thing that nobody is smart enough to use and didn't actually work, but hey at least Darcs is also 1000x slower than git and will lose data!