Defining specific problems and handwaving at solutions (was Re: What's Canonical thinking about Bazaar?)

[Martin Pool]

2009/11/24 Neil Martinsen-Burrell <nmb at wartburg.edu>:
> On 2009-11-23 11:24 , Aaron Bentley wrote:
>>
>> Neil Martinsen-Burrell wrote:
>>>
>>> If I could create a
>>> merge proposal from the command line, this would be a slam-dunk,
>>> particularly if it worked in tandem with --fixes to link the pushed
>>> branch to the given bug.
>>
>> "bzr send" is one way to create a merge proposal from the commandline,
>> submitting the proposal via email.
>
> Is there a Launchpad email address to which I can send this to have it
> registered as a merge proposal in the Launchpad UI?  Because this seems to
> be what is preferred (required?) for contributing to Bazaar now.

Yes, see https://help.launchpad.net/Code/Review

I think this should be mentioned in some appropriate place in the bzr
help too, maybe 'help launchpad'.

>> bzr-pipeline trunk now includes "lp-submit", which will create a
>> merge-proposal from the commandline, using the LP API to create the
>> proposal.  It works whether or not you've been treating the branch as a
>> pipe, but for pipelines it will also handle prerequisite branches.
>>
>> The --fixes integration is already handled as part of pushing Launchpad,
>> which is always a component of submitting a merge proposal.  With bzr
>> send, this push can be done indirectly, but the effect is the same.
>
> After doing a ton of small doc fixes this weekend and proposing them as
> merges one after the other on Monday, I understand better the --fixes
> integration.  When I make a local commit with --fixes lp:nnnnnn, then it
> just records that bit of information.  When pushed to Launchpad, that
> information then gets turned into a link between the branch and the bug.
>  Bravo!  That's just what I wanted.  (What about pushed branches with
> multiple --fixes?)

It gets linked to all of them.

>
> As far as lp-submit goes, I installed bzr-pipeline, but the help for
> lp-submit is terse to the point of nonexistence.  After trying it out to
> figure out how it works, I'd be glad to submit a merge proposal with some
> improved documentation.

That would be great.

>
> Is it possible that after some incubation time, lp-submit could be included
> in Bazaar's included Launchpad plugin?

Yes, we talked about this.

It depends on launchpadlib as a client for the REST web services, so
it would add that library and its dependencies.

The current launchpad integration uses an older and simpler (cruder?)
xmlrpc that can be called using python standard modules.  This will
add some considerable dependencies.  We think it will be ok to add
them as soft dependencies, meaning that you can only eg do lp-submit
if you have them, but otherwise the rest of bzr will work.

There may be some extra work here in building binaries which include
these libraries, but it's still a step forward.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>