calling for dirstate dogfooders, and change in branch policy now all tests pass

[Robert Collins]

DIRSTATE STATUS
---------------

The dirstate branch now has the dirstate based tree format as the
default. Its passing all tests, so I think at this point we should
change the policy to 'please run all tests before committing' to prevent
regressions.

It badly needs dogfooding though - I've started dogfooding it, and will
continue to do so. its about 50% faster for status now, and there is
room to move. I intend to do the _iter_changes API alterations I
discussed with Aaron tomorrow, and hopefully Martin will be able to get
the nested reference trees merged shortly too. That will cause a one-way
upgrade of your repository though, so, be careful if you do dogfood -
i.e. be sure to use a scratch branch & repository, or just dont run 'bzr
upgrade'.

WHY DOGFOOD ?
-------------
I'd like to make dirstate the default format for 0.15, but this requires
strong confidence that its an overall improvement for users, and that
requires *you*, our most closely involved users, to tell the folk who
have the time to cut code on this, how well it works for you.


HOW TO DOGFOOD
--------------
Grab a copy: 
$ bzr branch sftp://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bzr/bzr/dirstate SOMEDIR
Run bzr from there to make a new branch of anything:
$ SOMEDIR/bzr branch SOMEDIR NEWDIR
NEWDIR is now in dirstate format:
$ SOMEDIR/bzr info NEWDIR:
...
  working tree: Working tree format 4

If you have feedback on dirstate, please send mail to the list, or file
bugs in the launchpad bug tracker for bzr, tagged 'dirstate'.


FUTURE WORK
-----------
 - Tune _iter_changes to deliver all that status needs. (Robert)
 - Merge nested-by-reference trees (Martin)
 - Figure out the regression on xml based trees (???) (I am guessing its
a hashcache usage issue - should be simple)
 - Remove the use of a regular hashcache completely, which will reduce
parse time further still for dirstate tree operations. (???)

Things with (???) Are open for volunteers!


Thanks, and happy hacking!
Rob




-- 
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