backup / synchronization

[Neil Martinsen-Burrell]

edA-qa mort-ora-y <eda-qa <at> disemia.com> writes:

> I've read the user guide but I'm still a little bit unclear about how to
> actually do a backup of remote repository.

If you mean repository in the centralized version control sense of "something
that holds my project's history" then the answer is yes.  

Bazaar repositories however can hold multiple branches in one repository 
which is particularly helpful when those branches share a significant 
amount of history; then the mutual revisions are only stored once.  If 
you are using such a shared repository, then you would need to branch 
every one of the branches that live in the shared repository in order 
to have a complete backup.

Also, I believe that Bazaar branches and repositories are generally safe to
backup with filesystem tools.  That is, a filesystem copy of the directory
 where a repository or branch lives will produce a consistent, usable repository
or branch.

> If I do a "bzr branch" on a remote location, will I have a full copy of
> that remote repository?  That is, should the other respository
> disappear, will I have a full history locally?

Yes.  This is the hallmark of distributed version control: your local 
branch is a complete peer with the branch that is stored on a remote 
machine.

> Is this some sort of guide, or something I've missed in the user guide,
> that will clearly explain this me?

Perhaps it could be better explained in the User Guide.  If you can point 
to a section where you would expect to see it mentioned, someone may be 
able to improve that part of the documentation.

-Neil