[MERGE] Make typing 'bzr' under win98 do something useful

[Alexander Belchenko]

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Martin пишет:
> On 19/06/07, Alexander Belchenko <bialix at ukr.net> wrote:
>> Alexander Belchenko has voted -0.
>> Status is now: Waiting
>> Comment:
>> It's indeed should say something useful, but not all the time, and not
>> about locking. We should say about working tree format --dirstate.
>> Because with old --knit format it works OK.
>>
>> I vote -0 for first hunk of your patch,
>> and +1 for second hunk.
> 
> I don't think the status quo is satisfactory. Someone looking for
> information currently sees only a couple of vaguely encouraging
> statements:
> <http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:http://bazaar-vcs.org+windows+98>
> <http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrWin32Installer> "...installer itself is able
> to run on Windows 98."
> <http://bazaar-vcs.org/bzr/bzr.dev/NEWS> "IMPROVEMENTS: Support for OS
> Windows 98."

So, we need at first improve our information. I think the best place is Faq on Wiki.
We need to add info something like:

======================================================================
Bzr is able to work on Windows 98 in limited fashion. It supports old
checkout format named "knit". To initialize branches in this format use

bzr init --knit

And never upgrade for new format named "dirstate"
======================================================================

Someone with better english skill will improve such text.

> But when following the tutorial, it doesn't actually work (or give a
> useful indication of why it's failing):

May be in tutorial we need add a note about win98 limitations?

> ----
> 
> And "bzr selftest" just freezes after getting to:
> ----
> [519/6549 in 185s, 177 errors, 1 failed, 27 skipped, 1 missing features]
> ----

It's a known problem since 2005.

> Could of course go through and mark each command correctly as to
> whether it should work or not. But that's not been done, and for a
> basically defunct platform that's clearly not being tested would
> probably be more of a liability than an aid.
> 
> Even if the magic of the knit is known somehow, confusing conflicting
> feedback is given:
> ----
> D:\bzr\maybe>bzr init --knit
> 
> D:\bzr\maybe>bzr status
> Working tree format 3 is deprecated and a better format is available.
> It is recommended that you upgrade by running the command
>  bzr upgrade file:///D:/bzr/maybe/

This recommendation is the first thing that should be improved.
And it's main reason why I vote -0.

Actually we know that on win98 bzr is unable to work with "better format".
So this banner never should be shown on this platform.
Furthermore, it's better to warn user about known problem, as I propose in
my response to your patch.

> D:\bzr\maybe>bzr upgrade
> starting upgrade of file:///D:/bzr/maybe/
> making backup of tree history
> file:///D:/bzr/maybe/.bzr has been backed up to
> file:///D:/bzr/maybe/.bzr.backup
> 
> if conversion fails, you can move this directory back to .bzr
> if it succeeds, you can remove this directory if you wish
> bzr: ERROR: Could not acquire lock Unknown locking error: 0

As I said before, user should not do upgrade on win98.

> As said, the message can be improved on I'm sure, and maybe where it's
> placed, but I think a bzr global notice from platform detection is
> more useful and more honest than keeping quiet and pretending that an
> undocumented subset of functionality is 'support'.

I'm agree about your last statement. We know what working on win98
and what not working on win98. We know how to detect win98.
So we *can* say something useful to user.

> In summary, I think it should say something useful, all the time, and
> about whatever you want it to. Can you suggest an alternative patch
> with better warning?

I may suggest either provide information about win98 limitation on the wiki,
or(and) warn user about incompatibility of work with dirstate working tree
instead of "bzr: ERROR: Could not acquire lock Unknown locking error: 0",
and don't print recommendation to upgrade from knit to dirstate.

As I can see, it should be big patch, that affects many part of bzrlib.
And from this point of view I think adding info to wiki is simpler solution.

[µ]

P.S. I finished my work on proper win98 support just before dirstate was
introduced. So, we (bzr team/project) *never* has bzr release with proper
support of win98. Before 0.15 release there is problems with control
directories on win98. When I fix those issues, in 0.15 we have dirstates.
And win98 again becomes unsupported platform. And this fact upsets me a lot.

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