Stacked branching question

[Colin D Bennett]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:24:03 +0200
David Ingamells <david.ingamells at mapscape.eu> wrote:

> I concur with Nicholas. It is my hope that one should be able to do 
> everything that moves forward from the branched revno without any
> need for the repositories further down the stack. Thus "commit",
> "diff" (on local changes) and "status" should all work without
> needing to look outside the local branch. 

However, when stacked branches are used as a more flexible substitute
for shared repositories (think: a multi user hosting service or a team's
multi user VCS server), it is desirable to have commits be able to be
stored as deltas from past revision data, especially when dealing with
large files.

So I think that if at some point an offline commit to a stacked branch
is permitted, it should be an optional feature since it would eliminate
the possibility of storing the new revision as a delta based on
revision data from the stacked-on branch.

> Obviously "missing", "diff"
> with old revno's, "log" etc will be crippled without access to the
> repos below the top of the stack.
> After all, this enhancement did start off life with the name 'shallow 
> branches' and the term 'shallow' does imply a _little_ bit of
> depth ;-)
> 
> > | I would like in the future to have a mode of operation where it
> > either | initially fills the local repository with at least a full
> > copy of the | previous revision, or can do the commit knowing that
> > the previous | copies are there and therefore not storing deltas.
> > But we don't have | that in this release.
> > That's a shame - I was hoping it would at least support off-line
> > commits in its initial implementation - that seriously reduces its
> > usefulness (but I understand this is just the first
> > implementation). I just hope that it is something that will be
> > implemented in the not too distant future (1.7?). With off-line
> > commits of stacked branches Bazaar would be the only DVC worth
> > considering  ;-) 

Regards,
Colin