Bzr plugins *must* die!

[Ben Finney]

Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer at samba.org> writes:

> On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 10:47 +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> > When I first started using Bzr, I would pull the sources from the
> > bzr.dev repo. I stopped doing this regularly because it kept
> > breaking my plugins.

I rely heavily on VCS, and don't have much that I would be happy to
have disappear after working on it for months; so I, too, don't want
to run bzr.dev.

> > I then started only using the bzr installed with apt-get.

Hopefully you use 'aptitude' instead, which logs its actions, tracks
automatically-installed dependencies and removes them when no longer
needed, among many other benefits
<URL:http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-pkgtools.en.html#s-aptitude>.

> > Rob has also suggested I try bzr-loom, but because of the problems
> > I have had over the years I don't like using a plugin I can't
> > install as a package. I tend to become dependant on plugins and
> > I need stability.
> FWIW, bzr-loom will be packaged in intrepid.

bzr-loom is already packaged in Debian lenny; that's where I've been
using it from for a few months.

> > Despite what I think is a pretty conservative approach to plugin
> > usage, I'm still getting bitten.
> I would say conservative is whatever is provided by your
> distribution. There haven't been breakages like this in released
> versions of Debian or Ubuntu.

The latest released Debian installs bzr 0.11-1.1.

The latest released Ubuntu installs bzr 1.3.1-1.

Yes, Bazaar development is quite rapid; that seems to be part of what
the complaint is, that the pace is partially at the cost of
reliability.

> > Well isn't better for the developers to face those problems than
> > the users? :-)
> It means a slow-down of the development of these plugins and a
> barrier for changes. That affects users as well.

I think Erik's point is that it would affect users *positively*, by
increasing the reliability over time.

> > I use bzr_difftools about a hundred times a day. Fortunately its
> > small and simple so I can fix an version problems that arise.
> > Obviously, that would not be true for more complex plugins.
> Which specific complex plugins would you want to see merged though?
> I think shelve is already on the list of candidates to be merged
> into bzr core.

I would want the 'shelve', 'loom', and 'stats' plugins to be in core,
since those are (to me) conceptually core to Bazaar operating on
itself.

The 'email', 'upload', 'difftools' plugins are also about Bazaar
interoperating with other Bazaar instances, at a remove. I'm
ambivalent about whether they should be in core.

Plugins like 'launchpad', 'svn', etc. are primarily about Bazaar
interoperating with non-Bazaar things, so are conceptually better as
plugins.

> > I use and rely on dozens of tools and applications every day. None
> > of these other tools break anywhere near as often as Bzr. Don't
> > you see that as a QA issue? If you do, then isn't it time to look
> > for a solution.
> Do you run nightly snapshots of these tools?

Erik already said he works with OS-distributed Bazaar, avoiding
nightly snapshots. Why would you ask about nightly snapshots of other
tools?

-- 
 \       “Instead of having ‘answers’ on a math test, they should just |
  `\               call them ‘impressions’, and if you got a different |
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Ben Finney