Hi, sorry if this reply is a bit "broken", I am at LinuxTag and only have a weird webmail interface.
- To ease 'group' management of the cl packages I would like to use some Version Control System. The main requirements are: * should work with big archives (cmucl)
This is where Darcs can be a bit slow at times.
* should support a three-way merge (original, debianised version, new upstream)
This is not a problem. There is, for example, darcs-buildpackage that keeps a branch for upstream and one for debian. When a new upstream version arrives, you import it to the upstream branch and synchronize it with the debian one. Another solution would be to manage the debian/ directory in Darcs only, because merges are sometimes very slow (see above) and collect the patches using dpatch or cdbs' simple-patchsys. This should deserve enough power to everybody. :)
* can tag releases
Darcs.
* off-line use would be great
Again, Darcs.
Does anyone have strong ideas about any of the newer systems? I know that the merge is a pain with CVS, so I'm willing to use something else...
Besindes Darcs builtin merging algorithm, one can specify external applications for the task. Darcs also has the advantage of being very easy to use and it enables foreign persons to send in patches easily using "darcs send" that can be applied by piping their E-Mail through "darcs apply".
cl-aspectl could be part of it, if the license problem gets resolved.
Have not heard of Pascal Costanza about this yet. But is the Creative Commons Attribution License a problem for Ubuntu Universe as it is for Debian?