Some unscientific timing results (on the Python source tree)

[Neil Martinsen-Burrell]

Russel Winder <russel.winder <at> concertant.com> writes:

 
> Where does sftp:// fit into all this?  Is it the same as bzr+ssh:// ?
> 
> I had assumed sftp was the right way of working where SSH access was
> available but maybe that was a wrong assumption?

sftp:// is another one of the "dumb" protocols that Bazaar supports.  Quoting
the User Guide: "We describe HTTP, FTP, SFTP and HTTP-WebDAV as "dumb" servers
because they do not offer any assistance to Bazaar."  So, performance over SFTP
is generally worse than over bzr+ssh:// because it doesn't support special
purpose verbs that the smart server (the "bzr+" part) does support.  I find
working over bzr+ssh to be a much more pleasant experience than over sftp. 
Although, for small changes, I find that the time to authenticate over SSH seems
to be the limiting factor for e.g. commits on checkouts.  This time for
authentication should be the same for sftp or bzr+ssh.

-Neil