Documentation for Patch Queue Manager

Ben Finney bignose+hates-spam at benfinney.id.au
Mon Oct 15 02:12:34 BST 2007


Jeff Licquia <jeff at licquia.org> writes:

> Ben Finney wrote:
> > I can clearly demonstrate that the first few steps are equally
> > simple with Bazaar. Where I fall short is pointing to Bazaar's
> > support for repository hooks and commit actions. Both of us want
> > Bazaar to be the right choice, but currently it seems Mercurial
> > has this support simply and Bazaar doesn't. We'd both like to be
> > proved wrong.
> 
> Bzr itself has post-commit hooks, but I'm not sure they would help
> you. In particular, they're post-commit, which may have implications
> for bound branches.  Plus, to use them, you basically have to write
> a plugin that does what you want, and then point the post-commit
> hook at the function in the plugin.

Okay. This is clearly more complicated than setting a command in a
config file, as Mercurial is documented as supporting. So Mercurial
wins this one, for our purposes.

> > My vague impression is that PQM is part of the answer, but, as
> > this thread points out in its initial message, it seems to be
> > vastly under-documented, so we can't get very far figuring out
> > PQM, and if it's very difficult it will still compare poorly to
> > Mercurial.
> 
> The best documentation for PQM is in the source itself--not the
> source itself, but the README and manual shipped in the source.
> This should be put on the web so it's easy to find, definitely.

It's particularly surprising since I've seen users asking about this
many times and being half-heartedly pointed to PQM; the fact that
there is no user documentation online after all this time doesn't bode
well for us adopting it easily for our workflow.

The package also doesn't seem to be mature or well-supported enough to
have a package in Debian; there is an ITP that's nearly two years old
and nothing more I can see.

This fits a common theme of finding vague notes of "yes, we're working
on it" with no further updates regarding just about everything I can
find for PQM or server-side hooks in Bazaar. For an organisation
wanting to adopt this functionality, it's a high barrier to entry.

> I don't know how Mercurial implements this stuff, so I can't say
> whether PQM is better or not.  Were I in your shoes, I might try to
> find the answer to these questions for the Mercurial solution:
> 
>  - Is the hook asynchronous?  If users have to wait for a test suite
> to finish before their commit command exits, I predict the users
> will revolt at some point.  Of course, PQM is asynchronous.

I agree that would be important. I'll ask for that to be part of the
evaluation.

>  - How do you enforce workflow?  IMHO, this needs some purely
> server-side support. [...] PQM is basically an infrastructure for
> async, server-side automatic management of the workflow.

How does this mesh with support for hooks in the smart server? I've
found <URL:http://bazaar-vcs.org/SummerOfCode> which mentions (again)
"working on it", but frustratingly gives no date for when that comment
was made nor where to look for the latest status.

> Don't forget, too, the utility of add-ons like Bundle Buggy.

Looking at the web page <URL:http://bazaar-vcs.org/BundleBuggy>, that
seems like a large number of dependencies for the apparent
functionality.


I'm getting the strong impression that, while the code may be there,
Bazaar's support for commit-time and server-side actions is too
ill-documented and ill-supported (so few responses to a request for
information!) in comparison to Mercurial, and that we'll probably end
up choosing the latter.

This will be a disappointment, but I can't argue for Bazaar in this
situation unless I can find strong evidence soon that my above
impressions are wrong.

-- 
 \         "Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I |
  `\        guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis."  -- Jack |
_o__)                                                           Handey |
Ben Finney




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