Bazaar User Guide: Workflows

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ian Clatworthy writes:

 > I really do mean "commit" though, not "push". To dig a hole for myself
 > though, that 'commit' might happen by one of several ways including a
 > push of a merge commit. Another way, and perhaps the one I ought to be
 > recommending (?), is to commit to a checkout of the shared mainline.

This is all way too confusing for new users, *especially* the "I don't
need no steenkin' workflow theory, tell me how to commit my changes"
users the BUG is currently aimed at (cf. John Yates's post for a more
temperate description).  I can follow what you're saying with
difficulty, but I doubt most new users will be able to.

I think that the phrasing would better be in terms of *which* banches
and checkouts you keep locally, whether they are full branches or
lightweight checkouts (I hope I have the terminology correct here),
and the timing of commits, merges, and pushes.

Note that in VC work, all "true" VC actions incorporate a "commit",
while to CVS/svn users, commit actually has the semantics of "commit +
push".  Merge has "update + edit + commit" semantics in the workspace
while the branch is separate, while it has "update + edit + commit +
push" semantics at the time of "merge to mainline".  These habits of
thought are hard to overcome.

[detailed description omitted]

 > Does that make sense?

Yes, to me ... but to naive readers?  I doubt it, unfortunately.