bzr send: what is the bundle part ?

[Andrew Bennetts]

Xavier Maillard wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Can somebody point me to a simple explanation on what the bundle
> part of a 'bzr send' is all about ? What is the impact not to
> have it enclosed to our merge message exactly ?

The bundle part is the actual revision data serialised into a single
blob.  It's effectively a mini-repository, containing just the revisions
your branch has that aren't already in the target branch's repository.

If you omit the bundle from your merge directive, then you cannot do
“bzr merge MERGE_DIRECTIVE_FILE” (or “bzr pull”, or whatever).  You
would be able to perform the exact same merge by using the
“source_branch:” location in the merge directive headers, if it is
present (which is the PUBLIC_LOCATION you can set with the “bzr send”
command).

I don't see a simple explanation of this in our official documentation
though, which is definitely an oversight we should fix.

-Andrew.