Recording branch points

[Aaron Bentley]

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John Arbash Meinel wrote:
>> There is currently a model mismatch between bzr and Launchpad: the bzr
>> model really only knows about revisions, while Launchpad has an explicit
>> branch model.

I don't think that's a good way of distinguishing the models.  bzr most
definitely has branches.  It's just that creating a new branch
essentially clones the original.

>> This disconnect makes it impossible to reliably[1]
>> determine whether a revision seen by Launchpad in a branch genuinely
>> belongs to that branch or if its part of the ancestry baggage from the
>> parent branch.
>>
>>   [1] as usual, one can imagine heuristics based on the committer and
>> the branch nick, but it would be ugly and fragile.
> 
> Well, to do this, we would have to start creating some sort of UUID for
> each branch, and have it recorded along with the rest of the revision
> properties. As well as being reset by certain operations.

I think that isn't required for launchpad to know what revisions are new
to a branch.  Wouldn't a 'branch-point' marker be enough?

I'm hesitant to add a UUID to branches, because they won't be unique
very long.  Nicks seem more in the spirit of how branches actually behave.

Aaron
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