Deleting a branch from a shared repository. Is ti possible? Does it matter?

[John Arbash Meinel]

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Matiyam wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I have a shared repository and some experimental branches inside it.
> 
> Is it possible to delete some of the branches?

You can just delete directory of the branch. This doesn't remove the revisions
from the repository, it just removes the pointer into the repository.

It *is* possible to purge the data (I believe there is a 'garbage collection'
plugin to do this.) It is also possible to recover it if you haven't purged it
(there is a 'heads' plugin, though it might have been integrated into bzrtools).


> 
> Does it matter? I mean, maybe the storage they take is negible and it's not
> worth it.

Branch5 (the default) has a bit of overhead because it stores the mainline
history. Branch6 (the next default, --dirstate-with-tags) makes them truly
minimal, just storing the tip revision. So their total overhead is around 100
bytes.

> 
> By the way, if i have a repo with --no-trees option initialised, is there a way
> to know which branches it contains?

ls repo

or

find -name '.bzr' repo

If you have deep branches.

There is also 'bzr branches' from 'bzrtools', which does a pretty good job of
handling the fact that http doesn't have a fixed way of getting directory
listing. (But you have to have 'indexes' turned on).

> 
> Thanks a lot for this wonderful software!!
> 
> -- M

John
=:->

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