Stacking policy

[James Westby]

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for bringing this up.

On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 11:48 -0400, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> 1. Open containing folders looking for a shared repository or stacking
>    configuration.  If a shared repository is found, select that shared
>    repository.  If a stacking configuration is found, select that
>    policy.

Do you have any idea how this stacking configuration would look?

> 2. If no policy has been selected, and the branch is being created from
>    another branch (i.e. bzr branch), and the other branch has the same
>    URL prefix (including hostname, if applicable), select the other
>    branch as the stack-on branch.

This does ok at trying to make sure that the stacked-on branch doesn't
suddenly disappear. However, what about things like filesystem 
boundaries.

If I were to a USB stick to transfer a branch

  bzr branch bzr.dev /media/usb

then when I get this usb to the other machine it can no longer find
the revisions it needs.


> Possible pitfalls:
> - - If the user doesn't understand that the stacked-on branch is required
> for the stacked branch to work, they may delete the stacked-on branch.

I think this a pretty serious one.

> - - A stacked branch might have different visibility from its stacked-on
> branch.  For example, the stacked branch might be in /var/www/html,
> making it visible via http, while the stacked-on branch might not be
> visible via http.
> 
> We can reduce the amount of confusion by notifying the user when we're
> automatically choosing to stack.

That would be the least I would be happy with, with a note saying use
reconfigure (or whatever to make it non-stacked).

Is there a reason that you don't want to leave it up to shared-repos
and points 0 and 1 to do what the user wants?

Thanks,

James