[MERGE] make 'push' default to parent branch

[Russel Winder]

Robert,

On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 08:54 +1000, Robert Collins wrote:
[ . . . ]
> I think most folk with no relevant experience will be contributing to an
> existing project (its much harder to start a new project than bugfix an
> existing one); few projects allow $random to push directly into their
> branches, so I don't think its a reasonable default for that case.

I have to agree with Ben and Scott here, generally people will find it
easier to get started with a system like Bazaar (or Mercurial, Git,
Subversion (!), etc.)  by starting with "bzr init flobadob" (or the
equivalent).  The problem is that they then have to sort out for
themselves how to use the system sensibly -- as opposed to in silly and
stupid ways.  I agree that an extant, established project should offer a
framework of usage that avoids all the learning hassles.  However the
new person diving into project code is much more likely to generate a
patch put on the bug tracker or on the mailing list for committers to
process.

I suspect your model is for person to:

bzr checkout
<hack>
bzr diff

which is fine if it is already clear to the person that that is how to
work.  I am not sure that it is just now.  In 5 years it is highly
likely that all developers will be familiar with DVCS and we will be
shocked we ever had this email exchange.  For now though many developers
are just getting over the CVS -> Subversion change or are stuck with
Perforce or ClearCase (or other, even worse stuff).  For these people
the battle between Bazaar, Mercurial and Git is an esoteric issue that
doesn't affect them.  These are the people whose minds and hearts have
to be won over even before they know there is an issue.  Showing these
people how to manage their own small project is by far the easiest and
fastest way of convincing them that using Subversion for project version
control is a bad idea.

[ . . . ]
> You can even do:
>  bzr branch foo bar
>  cd bzr
>  bzr push :pull
> 
> to trivally set it up.

Is this last one right?  Scott proposes:

	bzr push :parent

which introduces something I hadn't spotted -- either :pull or :parent.
Or perhaps this is a new proposed feature not yet available?  I guess
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/252894 relates.

-- 
Russel.
====================================================
Dr Russel Winder                 Partner

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