bzr-gtk vs. QBzr

[Russel Winder]

On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 10:26 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Alexander Belchenko writes:
> 
>  > IIUC git can show you "remote" branches only because it holds the
>  > copy of them locally.  AFAIK it can't show log directly from
>  > server, as bzr does. It should mirror them first.  (May be I'm
>  > wrong here but I don't think so.)
> 
> That's correct.  gitk (which is a separate program) operates on the
> local cache, it knows nothing about svn or cvs (at least the one
> distributed with git 1.5.x didn't, I haven't looked at the code since
> then).

I think the point here is that a Git repository holds metadata and data
about all the remote branches that it knows about -- where Bazaar only
knows about :push and :parent.  I agree this is locally held information
and can in fact be out of date, but it is there and it is updatable and
updated.

So for example with Gant, I have 1.5.x and 1.6.x maintenance branches,
trunk and development.  1.5.x, 1.6.x and trunk should always be mirrors
of the Subversion repository (which actually holds Bazaar branches but
that is not the issue here), development is not a branch in Subversion
it is my playground are.

My Git repository has all these branches and tracks my push locations on
my website and on GitHub, so gitk gives me information about all the
branches locally, in the Subversion repository and in the two Git clones
that are publicly accessible.  This gives (fairly) reliable information
as to which repositories are in which state. 

My local Bazaar shared repository has 4 (or sometimes more) branches.
Whilst 3 of these should be Subversion mirrors qlog (and definitely
viz :-) do not tell me about any inconsistencies between local and
remote branches.  I have branches on Launchpad and my own server of all
these branches and there is no way in Bazaar of quickly checking the
consistency of all of them.  I can of course do a missing but I have to
do this on multiple bi-partite terms, there is no collated summary.

Gitk gives me all this -- at the risk of there being some outdatedness
admittedly.
   
>  > You can get the same effect with bzr if you regularly mirror remote
>  > branches to your shared repo.
> 
> That should work (but I believe git-svn does this automatically on any
> access to the svn repo).

As I hope I have explained above this is both right and wrong.  The
point for me is to check the consistency of local "mirrors".

I agree that if my mirrors were checkouts and not branches there would
be less chance of drift.  However, Tim Penhey convinced me some time
back that I didn't actually need checkouts -- and I was doing far too
much in the way of "commit --local" when I was using checkouts.

Perhaps I simply need to revisit this decision and switch back to using
checkouts for mirrors (or at least binding the branches I currently have
which should be the same).  My fear is that I will end up doing lots of
"commit --local" again which I have done for ages. 

>  > Or if you explicitly specify remote branch url in command line for
>  > qlog.
> 
> That doesn't.  One wants "$vcs visualize-dag --all" to automatically
> pick up all branches the "$vcs-svn" is aware of.

The point here though is that Git tracks far more in the way of remote
branches than Bazaar.  It may be that the very natures of Bazaar and Git
are going to get in the way of emulating Gitk behaviour.  Then it is
down to finding the right workflow model.  I still feel that I have yet
to find the right way of working with Bazaar (and Git) and Subversion --
in a sense Bazaar is too flexible :-)

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

Concertant LLP                   t: +44 20 7585 2200, +44 20 7193 9203
41 Buckmaster Road,              f: +44 8700 516 084
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