colocated branches plugin?

[Alexander Belchenko]

Jelmer Vernooij пишет:
> Alexander Belchenko wrote:
>> Hi Jelmer,
>>
>> I found your colocated branches plugin. Unfortunately it cannot be
>> used on Windows at all because of lacks of symlinks there.
>>
>> What you think about using lightweight checkouts instead of symlinks
>> for branch pointers?
> I'm not sure if it would be possible to use lightweight checkouts to
> another branch in a subdirectory without a .bzr directory in between. If
> it is in fact possible, patches are most welcome :-)

Well, something like this perhaps will work:

cwd/
    .bzr/
       branch/       <---- branch reference
       branches/
         .bzr/       <---  treeless shared repo
         trunk/      <---  repository branch
         featureX/   <---- repository branch
       checkout/
     <working files here>

The one big problem I see here is branch reference should use relative 
path, but standard bzr branch reference implementation uses absolute 
paths, so the structure above is not movable across filesystem.
There is possible to introduce and use another branch reference format 
with relative paths support, but this break compatibility with existing 
clients w/o plugin (as you claim in your readme). As a bonus user can 
use standard switch command to switch between branches.

May be I can provide a patch to implement my idea, if it makes sense for 
you.