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

[Marius Kruger]

hi,

2009/4/16 Robert Collins <robert.collins at canonical.com>:
>> 2. a branch could reuse the repository of a dependent branch
>>    without needing to explicitly create a shared repo in a parent
>>    directory.
...
> We can have a list of branches in the repository - we currently have
> that by 'ls -lR' under the repository - its the 'branches are contained'
> rule. This is important because it means a repository can reason about
> what data is transient and removable, and what is used. Jelmer's
> colocated branches plugin is a way of extending this without adding
> directories where a user has their source code.

I think using colocated branches should be the default i.e.
the user should not have to think about repositories for most use cases.
They should be able to just branch from trunk and if one day they
need to make a separate branch/line-of-development they should be able
to branch it in-place and switch the working tree between the branches.

So maybe we should call the default branch trunk, then a sequence of
events could look like:
cd ~/projects
bzr branch lp:foo foo
cd foo
<start messing around with the code>
<realise you want to branch>
bzr branch trunk bar
bzr switch bar
bzr commit -m "my changes fixed the problem"
bzr send

* this mimics the repository with a "work" checkout which gets
switched between the branches workflow, but with less overhead for the
user.
* this might be how git works, I wouldn't know, but this is how I
think bzr should work by default.
* we could still have shared repositories but that should only needed
for advanced use cases,
  and not for day to day cheap-branching and switching for human developers.

-- 
<| regards
U| Marius
H| <><