Shallow branches - some thoughts

[Paul Moore]

In reading the thread on shallow branches, it has become clear to me
that my requirements may not be as complex as those being discussed.
Specifically, the discussions seem to assume that a shallow branch
must, of necessity, be treated as an equal of the source branch.

In my case, I have no interest in taking a shallow branch from a repo
where I have commit rights - for that situation, I would use either a
full branch, or a lightweight checkout. The case where I would use a
shallow branch would be where I only had read access to the source,
and I wanted to create a local branch, where I could do development
and merge from the source, but I would never expect to push back
directly (contributions back would be via patches or maybe merge
directives only).

I'm very new with Bazaar, and so my grasp of the various concepts is
far from strong, but as a result of the above, I wonder: would there
be any simplification if shallow branches were to be considered as
unrelated to their "parent", in the same sense that not all operations
need to be allowed - pulls from the parent are OK, but pushes back to
the parent are not, basically.

This model also avoids the question of history "disappearing", in the
sense that (conceptually at least) the shallow branch is not a full
project repository (in the same sense that a lightweight isn't).

Does any of this make sense?

Paul.