Working on several branches at the same time

[David Cournapeau]

James Westby wrote:
>
> The difference between whether you can do a merge or a pull isn't how
> many commit you made on the fixbug branch, it's whether there have
> been any new commits on mainline in the meantime.
>   

Yes, of course, my wording was really poor. What I meant was that when 
fixing bugs, I have two situations:
    - quick fix (wrong spelling in a variable name, etc...), one commit 
with the message "Fix bug N".
    - longer change: a serie of commits, no message "Fix bug N."

Then, I pull the fix in case 1, or merge in case two with the message 
"Fix bug N." This is also linked to the --fixes option of commit. I am 
not quite sure to understand at which point to use it.

>
> That's quite a subjective thing, but the extra merge commits
> are necessary in general if you don't want to rebase.
>   

That may be subjective, but having several times the same commit is at 
least surprising.

>
> Do you mean "works at every revision on the mainline?"
>   

Yes.

> It's possible to have that, but you are not only doing rebase operation,
> but mutating revisions as you go, so there is more room for unexpected
> behaviour.
>   

What do you mean by mutating revisions ? Can bzr do that (I mean without 
messing with bzr internals) ? What for ?

cheers,

David