bzr-pipeline, installers and explorer

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Aaron Bentley writes:
 > Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > > Barry Warsaw writes:
 > > 
 > >  > Looms have warts though.  'record' is a well-known one, but so is the  
 > >  > requirement to 'export-loom' in order to publish the branches, say  
 > >  > pushing them to Launchpad.
 > > 
 > > But isn't all of this due to format-foogling?
 > 
 > No.  Loom introduces changes to the model.  The format changes flow from
 > the model changes.

Of course.  As my stats prof used to say, "you're taking the model ==
implementation too seriously".  Ie, much of the model should *not* be
reflected in the (default) UI because it can be deduced from other
aspects of the current configuration for standard workflows.

 > Threads are an addition to the model, and 'export-loom' only exists
 > because this concept has been added to the model.

But if by default the target repository for push supports looms fully,
won't 'export-loom' be necessary only if you want to publish a
loomless branch for some reason?  (This is starting to sound like
git-talk, isn't it?)

 > The 'record' operation is also an addition to the model.

Of course.  But the HOWTO recommends recording immediately after
reaching the "top" of the loom.  Why not have commit do this
implicitly, and provide a --no-record switch to commit?  This is not a
no-brainer, IMO.  Eg, something very similar is occurring in the
classic cVCS context where checkpointing (Hi, Karl!) a change is
conflated with publishing it.  These operations were (correctly)
separated by dVCSes, but one of the things y'all are very proud of is
Bazaar's ability to transparently reconflate them.  It's quite
possible that something similar should occur here.  But then again,
maybe not.

Note that all question marks above denote rhetorical questions for the
purpose of this discussion.  I don't really care whether you have what
you consider good and satisfactory answers already.  My whole point
here is that it may not be a good time to integrate either loom or
pipeline until there's some degree of consensus about the answers.