[rfc] feature-request: command to see status of checkout

[David Allouche]

Alexander Belchenko wrote:
> Now bzr has command 'status' that show status of WorkingTree. I wonder
> why there is no similar command for inspecting difference between master
> and local branch?
> 
> However, there is no separate command to see status of checkout: is
> checkout in sync with master branch, or don't have some revisions, or
> have extra revisions (after --local commit). I understand that this can
> be obtained via 'missing' command, but latter primarily was designed to
> comparing two independent branches.

I would like "bzr status" to say it if a checkout is out of date.
Because "bzr status" is what I normally run just before a commit, and an
out of date tree cannot be committed without update or --local.

On the other hand, that would mean that status would generally depend on
network access. Regardless of how offline usage would be handled, that
would make status much slower for checkouts (at least a few roundtrips
required), which is clearly not desirable.

I think a reasonably compromise would be adding a "bzr status
--checkout" option that causes status to report of out of date
checkouts. People that want it could enable it in their "bzr st" alias.

At least, status should always say it if the working tree is out of date
in a non-checkout branch. You can get in that situation when committing
from checkout on a branch that has a local working tree. And when you
have that situation, it can be very confusing.

> At least 'update' command could have '-n' flag to print this sort of
> information. Probably, this command also could print suggestions about
> existing methods how to make both branches in sync.

If you are using update on a checkout, you probably already know what
you need to do to handle a out-of-date checkout. The "bzr update"
command does not seem like the right place to tell users about "bzr
update" :)

> At some point 'bzr info' try to show many information at once, but this
> command too heavy over really big repo. And 'bzr info' is really print
> too mush info but sometimes it miss some info. Right now 'info' it's a
> hobbled monster.

I use "bzr info" mostly to make sure that my checkout is attached to the
 right branch. That is important when using my "bzr switch" plugin. In
that case, generating the repository wide statistics is waste of time,
and displaying them is a waste of pixels. I would like those statistics
to be optional.

One change I would like would be: "bzr info" only display statistics
that can be gathered in constant time (nick, parent, repo and branch
location, etc.). More expensive statistics would be enabled with "bzr
info --long".

-- 
                                                            -- ddaa

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 254 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar/attachments/20060806/51b4c8eb/attachment.pgp