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

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Mark Shuttleworth writes:
 > Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

 > > It seems to me that "bzr init-repo" is the kind of thing that users
 > > should not need to know about, period.

 > I think being able to create a repo somewhere that can then be used by
 > multiple branches is useful. However, it should NOT be the only way to
 > get shared repos.

I agree with both your points.  My point is that (with few exceptions
in practice) creation of and linking to a repo will be a side effect
of creation of a branch.  If you want it somewhere other than the
traditional .bzr/repository, use the --repo=/path/to/shared/repository
option.  If it already exists, validate it then link to it, where
"link" means "do whatever we do to indicate to a branch where its repo
is".

There could be a user profile item giving a default shared repo.  If
--repo is given without an argument, then prompt for a location, with
the default shared repo as default (this should always be confirmed, I
think).  Alternatively to creating a local repo automatically, "bzr
init" invoked interactively without --repo could always prompt for a
repo.  Eg:

    $ bzr init
    Initialized branch in /Users/steve/projects/foo.
    Choose a location for your repository of versions.  It is safe to
    accept the default.
    Repository location [./.bzr/repository]: 
    Created repository in /Users/steve/projects/foo/.bzr/repository.
    $ 

The user's profile could even contain a list of known shared
repositories, accessible via the familiar readline history mechanism.

And if you really want to create a repo without creating a branch,
this can be an obscure option to "bzr init".  For example, bzr init
--repo=/path/to/shared/repository --no-branch.  Eg, this could be used
for an OS install script, and the OS distro might provide a default
user profile that points to this system shared repo.

I'm not sure this would be compatible with current usage of bzr init,
though.