[MERGE/RFC] Userdoc Driven Design on the Bazaar 2.0 UI

[Jonathan Lange]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:40 AM, Ian Clatworthy
<ian.clatworthy at canonical.com> wrote:
> With our shiny new repository format almost ready to go, we're
> fast approaching the time for calling something Bazaar 2.0.
> Think June/July as a likely line in the sand IIUIC.
>
> And high on the list of things many of us want to see as part of
> 2.0 is a gentler on-ramp for new users. While we have a deliberate
> policy of maintaining backwards compatibility 99% of the time,
> releasing 2.0 though is a rare opportunity for us to take a
> hard, objective look at our *overall* usability, making changes
> if they are warranted. It's fine to add feature after feature
> over time but does the net whole still make sense to new users?
> Recently, we've been hearing otherwise.
>
> Numerous ideas have been put forward recently to improve the
> new user on-ramp, e.g. my draft spec on easier workspace setup,
> Robert's email re implicit shared repo creation and the (poorly
> titled) email thread re hard-linking local repositories. This
> patch throws some more ideas into the mix, namely:
>
> 1. checkouts should be lightweight by default (ala svn)
>
> 2. a branch could reuse the repository of a dependent branch
>   without needing to explicitly create a shared repo in a parent
>   directory.
>
...
>
> FWIW, I'm 100% in agreement about checkouts being lightweight
> by default. I also like Mark's second idea *but* I'd like to be
> convinced by others that we need it. Maybe we're better off
> making existing features (stacking & shared repositories) Just
> Happen rather than adding more ways of doing things, how ever
> good those new ideas might be? OTOH, maybe Mark's suggestion
> provides a gentler transition from standalone branch to
> "shared" repository and we ought to run with it and run with it
> hard? Please comment!
>

Without giving too much thought to this particular solution, I think
it would be a *great* thing if new users didn't even have to know that
there is such a thing as a repository. It's a very useful concept in
the internal design of Bazaar, but I don't think that it adds much to
user experience.

In an ideal world, Bazaar would share history by default. The user
documentation wouldn't have to describe three ways of sharing history
-- the tool would just use one of them always. The other two could
feature as part of an Advanced Features section.

jml