Bazaar as interface to Subversion repositories

[Ben Finney]

Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer at samba.org> writes:

> On Sat, 2008-11-01 at 14:13 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > Specifically, this has been the underlying explanation presented
> > to mewhen I pointed out how using Bazaar as a client to existing
> > Subversion branches *that other users interact with through
> > Subversion tools* is sub-optimal. IIRC, the discussions covered
> > areas like design decisions made in the storage data, which were
> > appropriate only if one didn't use Subversion as the client.
> Why is it suboptimal to use bzr-svn this way?

Two bad experiences in particular: merges that duplicate existing
merges in the branch
<URL:http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.bazaar-ng.general/41686/>
and metadata changes in ever-increasing quantity that no user actually
cares about on every commit from a Bazaar client
<URL:http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.bazaar-ng.general/45330/>
<URL:http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.bazaar-ng.general/42975/>.

> What sort of design decisions would be bad for svn clients?

I can't speak much about the design decisions themselves, since I
don't understand them well.

> > I got the impression similar to “yes, it would have been good to
> > support using Bazaar as a client to existing
> > still-used-by-Subversion-people Subversion repositories, but that
> > would detract from the goal of using Subversion repositories to
> > store Bazaar-only branches”. If that's *not* a goal of ‘bzr-svn’,
> > then I am back to not understanding why sacrifices have been made
> > in support of it.
> That really is an incorrect impression. I must've missed those
> discussions

You participated in some of the above threads. Perhaps we were (and
still are?) speaking at cross-purposes.

> and would be really interested in hearing what exactly makes it hard
> to use bzr-svn as client on the same repository that's being used by
> "real" svn clients.

The issues in the above threads have effectively discouraged me from
using ‘bzr-svn’ as anything but a one-way mechanism (i.e. read-only
checkouts of Subversion branches). Essentially, I can't expect
existing Subversion users to respect my choice of VCS client unless I
can be confident the tool will stay out of their way.

I've been chased away from projects because the existing hackers take
the (quite reasonable) position that if I won't use a tool that
operates well with the repository, I shouldn't use the repository at
all. That makes it rather difficult to discover and report specific
issues with ‘bzr-svn’, of course, but there's no good reason to submit
others unwillingly to be guinea pigs in bug hunting the VCS tool
chain. The only option I'm left with, then, is to not use ‘bzr-svn’
for that purpose at all.

-- 
 \     “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” —Mark |
  `\                                    Twain, _Following the Equator_ |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney