New user with a few questions.

[Raindog]

Hello,

I am trying to configure the optimal repository layout for my projects 
and am running into some problems.

I want to have the following structure:

MainRepo (init-repo)
|    +projects (?)
|    |    +proj1 (init?)
|    |    |   trunk
|    |    |   branches
|    |    +proj2
|    |    +projgroup1 (init-repo)
|    |    |    +trunk  (init)
|    |    |    |   proj1 (add to trunk)
|    |    |    |   proj2 (add to trunk)
|    |    |    +branches
|    |    |    |   ...
|    +thirdparty
|    |    some3rdpartylib
|    +resources
|    |   randomstuff


Currently I have the following issues:
1. When I want to branch in the general term, the docs say to "copy" my 
directory to another location and that that is a new branch. It seems to 
me then that that branch has lost it's relationship to its original/parent.

    Ex. copy projects\projgroup1\trunk\ 
projects\projgroup1\branches\somebranch

It appears to be that that operation drops the information about the 
branch/copy operation.

2. Similar to the 1st one, if I use bzr branch command, I find I have 
some rather unpleasant limitations. The 1st limitation is that I can no 
longer directly branch projects\projgroup1\trunk\proj1, I have to branch 
projects\projgroup1\trunk. If I want to be able to branch the projects 
in projgroup1\trunk, I have to init each directory and then I have to 
manually push/pull/update/checkout each project which is undesireable 
for users.

3. repositories don't seem to actually have any benefit because users 
have to check out each item in the repo individually, they can't just 
check out the main repo, when they do, they literally get nothing but a 
.bzr folder.


My goal is to have a central server, and have been following chapter 5 
of the Bazaar User Guide. The problem is that the guide doesn't mention 
how one would actually go about creating anything but a repo (init-repo) 
that contains a branch (init), but unless you specifically check out the 
branch, if you just check out the repo, again, you get nothing. I can 
also make the repo a branch and add files/revisions to it that way, but 
any branches in the repo are again left out. I don't understand how this 
is desirable or wanted behavior.

Is it common or a best practice to make a repo, make the repo a branch 
also, add a setup script for users to execute after their initial 
checkout that essentially checks out the rest of the branches/repo's of 
the repo?

My second question relates to user authentication. Does bzrserve support 
any user authentication or do I need to configure authentication on the 
protocol such as ssh, etc.

Thanks for your time!
Josh