bzr questions

[Jordan Breeding]

On Wednesday, September 28, 2005, at 10:49AM, John A Meinel <john at arbash-meinel.com> wrote:

>Jordan Breeding wrote:

<snipped>

>> 
>> After doing `bzr log | less` and then quitting early on I get:
>> 
>> bzr: broken pipe
>> 
>> Is this just accepted as normal or will this error be gone in the  future?
>
>I think it is acceptable. Because try this:
>
>cvs log | less
>
>I get the following:
>$ cvs log | less
>cvs log: Logging .
>cvs log: Logging CVSROOT
>cvs log: Logging Distance
>cvs [log aborted]: received broken pipe signal
>
>Most commands that aren't able to print out all of their text complain 
>at least a little about the broken pipe.
>
>'cat' and 'zcat' don't seem to complain. Do you feel there is a reason 
>not to?
>

Honestly, while I understand why it happens, and know that cvs also has
the problem I have always found the messages a little annoying.

More than me finding them a little annoying (which I can deal with), I
know that as all of the new revision control programs have started
becoming more usable (monotone, mercurial, bzr, git, etc.) most seem to
have started actually trying to pay attention to what most people
actually find easy to use.

I think that monotone handles broken pipes currently, mercurial did,
then they got broken, and now they are fixed again
(http://www.selenic.com/pipermail/mercurial/2005-September/004598.html).

I think that overall while I understand why things are happening there
might be a class of users who eventually use bzr but don't necessarily
know a lot about shells, pipes, etc.  To those users it might seem like
something is broken if all they did was `bzr log | less` scroll for a
while and hit "q".  Just a thought.

Does bzr ever call out to an external merge program?

Sorry for all of the basic questions I have been asking, I only just
started really looking into bzr (I like that it tracks directories,
which mercurial does not).

Jordan