Revision storage question

[John Arbash Meinel]

Angela wrote:
> Hello, I have another question, this time about how revisions are stored.
> I've been reading the website and from http://bazaar-vcs.org/Revision it
> says that revisions don't store an exact copy of every single version.
> Additionally I've read that commits don't succeed unless something in the
> branch has been modified (or you use --unchanged).
> 
> My question/request for clarification is, does that mean that when you
> run a
> commit (say on a whole branch), Bazaar-NG only looks at modified files and
> stores information about that? So unmodified files in each successive
> commit
> don't add up to the total size of the branch?

Correct.

> 
> The reason why I'm asking (in case it would help clarify what I'm
> asking) is
> because I'm thinking of making a few directories versioned on my computer,
> and instead of having to run bzr to commit everytime I change something,
> I'm
> thinking of scheduling a task for bzr to try to commit said
> directories/branches on a regular basis (say daily or weekly); since Bazaar
> won't commit if nothing's changed, that works according to plan, but now
> I'm
> curious as to which is "better" in terms of storage space, commit a
> particular FILE (i.e., if I edit something, I commit it afterwards) or if I
> should just let the scheduler take care of things since it will only commit
> the file (in essence) after all.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Angela

I would generally recommend committing manually and doing it based on
accomplishment rather than a specific timeline.

Like:

bzr commit -m "Added section 2"
bzr commit -m "Apply review comments from Jerry"
etc.

I'm not sure about the: "revisions don't store an exact copy of every
single version"

If anything I would say we *do* store an exact copy of every single
version. Just if it happens to have exactly the same text as the
previous commit we continue to use that text.

I'll reply to your other email to discuss how you could use Bazaar in
that layout.

John
=:->