Info Q article on DVCS - a request and some feedback

[Ian Clatworthy]

AUVRAY Sebastien wrote:
> Hi Ian,
> 
> With:
> /cd mozilla.bzr
> bzr clone master my-fix/
> I get better times: 117sec, which is nearly twice faster than without
> shared repository but still a lot higher than competitors.

That really is strange. I've downloaded the various repositories
you used and tested out the bzr and hg ones at least. I noticed
that the Bazaar one wasn't packed so I did that and cleared out
obsolete packs. (fastimport does that implicitly now but it didn't
when you ran it.) That put bzr further ahead of the others in
storage efficiency btw.

The very first time I ran clone, both Bzr and Hg took over a minute
with Hg being quicker. Running the benchmark a few times though,
I get repeatable numbers:

* bzr 1.5+ - 22 secs
* hg 0.95 - 26 secs

Now these aren't the versions you tested but the Hg figure
is close to yours and I don't think bzr has changed much in this
area recently.

Anyhow, I've raised a bug for this to track it. See
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/230567. I've also
released a patch today that speeds up bzr further - taking
it down to 16 seconds. If that patch gets approved, it should
be available in Bazaar 1.6, 2-3 weeks from now. See
http://bundlebuggy.aaronbentley.com/request/%3C4836BC78.2030109%40internode.on.net%3E.

If you have any additional thoughts on why bzr is giving you
such a different number from what I'm seeing, please let me know.

Ian C.