Smart server progress: take a look!

[Andrew Bennetts]

Hi all,

The smart server branch (http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bzr/bzr/hpss) is
progressing nicely.  All repository_implementations tests are passing, and so
are the majority of branch_implementations tests.  A lot of the failures are to
do with faulty assumptions in tests (that the branch/repo being tested exists on
local disk, i.e. that 'foo' is as good as self.get_url('foo')).

I'm working on the last 30 or so branch_implementations tests (and a couple of
odd regressions in non-RemoteBranchFormat branch_implementations tests), then
it's time to run the whole test suite and see what happens.  I think it's
getting pretty close to all tests passing.  It's already substantially
functional, and getting better every day.

That means it's also just about ready for real world testing.  We have about 15
smart methods (excluding the 0.14 VFS methods) implemented already, which should
give noticeable improvements to "bzr info" and some cases of "bzr push" and
probably others.

You can try out the smart server by putting checkout on the hpss branch on a
server with SSH access and using the BZR_REMOTE_PATH environment variable.  For
example, if you have the hpss branch extracted to "code/hpss" on your server,
and "stuff/hpss" locally, you could do:

    BZR_REMOTE_PATH=code/hpss stuff/hpss/bzr info bzr+ssh://server/....

I'd love feedback on how it works for you.  The branch is mature enough that bug
reports can be dealt with and fixed.  I expect there to be a few rough edges
with error reporting and I'm sure that the hpss client won't degrade gracefully
against a 0.14 server, but these problems can be fixed.

Please feel free to have a play, review the code, fix some tests, or just ask
questions!

-Andrew.