[ANN] Bazaar Externals plugin

[Ian Clatworthy]

Eugene Tarasenko wrote:
> Ian Clatworthy пишет:
>> As a high priority, can we please change this filename to be
>> .bzrmeta/externals?
> 
> If .bzrignore moved to .bzrmeta/ignore I agree, but if not moved what for to
> confuse users?

Hi Eugene,

Firstly, thanks for working on this plugin.

There are very good reasons for putting metadata in a special directory
(.bzrmeta) and not have it pollute the tree. To begin with, it makes it
easier for users to see the real tree vs metadata about the tree. It
also simplifies code for numerous commands, e.g. export. There are
potential reliability implications, e.g. it may be necessary to process
files in that directory first at times and skip them altogether at other
times. In a perfect world, we'd have all metadata out of the tree.
However, it's complicated to implement a UI for managing the lifecycle
of that special metadata - add, commit, merge, pull, etc. - quickly.
Using a reserved directory (.bzrmeta) inside the tree is a good compromise.

I'd fully support a patch that changed bzr to look for ignore rules in
.bzrmeta/ignores *first* and only fell back to .bzrignore if it wasn't
there. After that patch landed, we could encourage existing projects to
rename their current file to the new convention and update the
documentation to use the preferred name.

At this stage, writing that patch is not on *my* list simply because I
have a huge amount of other things to do. That shouldn't discourage you
from doing the right thing and following our now official policy of
using .bzrmeta/external. I'm sure we can help you with the code changes
if required. I'm also sure it will help users 3 months from now if all
plugins adopt this policy consistently.

Ian C.