Recommended use of Bazaar for single-committer multiple-machine projects?

[John Arbash Meinel]

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Mary Gardiner wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008, John Arbash Meinel wrote:
>> I don't think my workflow is optimal for everyone, but I can give you my
>> layout if it gives a viewpoint:
> 
> Thanks, it is useful to have a look. I think though I'm going to end up
> being particularly interested in the workflow of people who work across
> machines regularly, which does seem unusual in this discussion (Adrian
> Wilkins being I think the only person to date to suggest a regular use
> of more than one desktop). Do you know how you'd modify this if every
> second day you were working on more or less the same branches from a
> different machine?
> 
> -Mary
> 

I was working on 3 different machines originally, and I just used heavy
checkouts everywhere. Overtime that dropped to 2, and then my laptop has
gotten enough horsepower that I pretty much just work from it 100% of
the time.

I still have my server, but I almost never do development there.

Also, when I was working from many different machines, it was pretty
rare for me not to have network connectivity. They were all desktop
machines/servers so pretty much connected 24/7.

If I was to suggest a "clean" approach, it would be to have a mainline
checkout that you only commit to when online, and a single local branch
for doing any other development.

Otherwise in your case I would just use a single checkout on each
machine. When you go offline, use "bzr unbind" and then "bzr commit",
rather than "bzr commit --local".

When you come back online, I would probably do:

  bzr push
  bzr bind

Which should work 90% of the time. Since if you are the only one working
on it, you couldn't really be committing somewhere else.

On other machines, the first thing you do to start the day is:

  bzr up

And then you get to commit as normal.

If you forgot to sync somewhere, and things have started diverging, then
you'll could probably do:

  bzr merge
  # resolve any conflicts
  bzr commit
  bzr push
  bzr bind

And you are back in sync.

John
=:->
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