Feedback from evaluation in a corporate environment

[Paul Moore]

2010/1/8 Barry Warsaw <barry at canonical.com>:
> On Jan 08, 2010, at 03:50 PM, Philippe Lhoste wrote:
>
>>I understand the irony (yes?) but I felt I should explain why a simple
>>'init' is still useful.
>
> 'bzr init' is a useful command but it, and init-repo probably do not have the
> best names to encourage people to use the right command at the right time.

While I was (to an extent) being ironic, it nevertheless remains true
that the *normal* response when people note that they have performance
issues and it becomes obvious that they used "bzr init" is to say "you
shouldn't have done that".

So based on that I'd say that "bzr init" is not the right command if
I'm going to hit performance issues. But how can I know that in
advance? Is "bzr init" only appropriate for repositories up to a
certain size? A certain number of revisions? As long as I promise not
to complain about performance?

Again, yes I'm being ironic, but there's a genuine point here. It
should be clear to the (new) user precisely when "bzr init" is
appropriate, and for those cases, the Bazaar developers should be
committed to improving performance as needed to satisfy users. If
there's a break-point (for example, in terms of size) above which "bzr
init-repo" is more appropriate than "bzr init", then there should be a
clear, documented, and ideally simple and quick, procedure for
converting from the one form to the other.

Barry's distinction between personal/new and established is a start,
but is it correct or useful? I have a few small public projects hosted
in places like Google Code. If someone else starts contributing, do
they treat the project as "established"? Does that mean I need to
switch my repository format (irony again I guess, obviously it
doesn't)? Don't forget, this is a problem for new users, so "use your
judgement" is not appropriate - by definition, new users have no
judgement on these matters yet.

Paul.