Making branches and repos (was Re: Better name for dpush wanted)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Matthew D. Fuller writes:
 > On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 02:14:24AM +0900 I heard the voice of
 > Stephen J. Turnbull, and lo! it spake thus:
 > > 
 > > It sort of makes sense, but "branch" takes a source branch and the
 > > target must not exist,
 > 
 > That's an existing bias, and a bug.  It would require fixing the bug
 > (which should happen anyway), and changing that bias.  But any
 > reforming of these things will involve changing some bias

I don't see a bug; the necessary operations are all do-able, the UI is
a little annoying.  Bias, yes.  If you use the semantics

bzr branch arg1 arg2 -> clone arg1 (branch URL) into arg2 (directory)
bzr branch arg1      -> clone arg1 into ./`basename arg1`
bzr branch           -> initialize current directory as a branch

it would work technically, but of the semantic options available in
the branch command only --standalone makes sense in the last form.
And to me, anyway, the naked command "branch" immediately evokes the
response: "branch what?"  I could get used to it, but it's awkward.

 > your collapse of init{,-repo} does as well.

That's not a bias as I understand it, that's a real bug.  Users should
be allowed to *specify* storage, not required to *manage* it.