users overservations on the plugin handling

[Tim Michelsen]

Dear BZR-developers,
I have been using BZR since autumn 2007 (I think so). At least quite for 
some time.
I like it for many reasons. The main are:
* cross-platform
* TortoiseBZR (hasn't been there from the beginning)
* flexibility (I can have it on low-end FTP...)

I have encountered difficulties here and there. Filed bugs and Q&A. But 
generally it works well.
The interesting is that I cannot use bzr to pull from Launchpad behind a 
Squid-based firewall.
As I still do like it, I will try with my feedback from a user PoV to 
improve it.

Here I wanna share my perception of the plugin system. As BZR matzres, I 
think it could receive some improvement:

The BZR plugin system has some shortcomings from the user point of view:
     * no common specifications / minimum requirements
         * plugin help
         * command help
         * crossplatform compatibilty & no info if used on wrong platform
     * the following could be done to improve these:
         * it should be easy to upgrade (all) plugins
         * the GUI (Windows) could have a plugin manager that takes 
plugins from
             online repository (c.f. QGIS)
         * many plugins have external dependencies on other python modules
             (e.g. svn relys on subvertpy.py). But these are not tracked.
         * plugins should be crossplatform or at least state the system 
and show a message if used
             on the wrong platform
         * why not use eggs or easy_install?

I can see that there are 2 blueprints with similar target:
Add setuptools support for bzr and Launchpad: 
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/bzr/+spec/bzr-setuptools-support
A plugin manager with functionality similar to apt, fink, and so on.: 
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/bzr/+spec/bzr-plugin-manager

I am not a frequent reader of this list. What about putting up a 
blieprint on this?

Thanks for BZR and all the best,
Timmie