[RFC] Vanilla checkouts in 2.2

[Paul Moore]

2010/1/12 Vincent Ladeuil <v.ladeuil+lp at free.fr>:
>>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> writes:
>
> <snip/>
>
>    >>  if you just want a readonly mirror of a remote branch, where you can
>    >> look at the tree and the history...
>    >>    ... run 'bzr branch URL' and then 'bzr pull' to update it
>    >>
>    >> (Those command are what we would say now; I'm not saying they're
>    >> optimal and I would hope to see them replaced.)
>
>    Paul> (Confused newbie point here) In what sense is that
>    Paul> "readonly"? It's certainly possible to make changes in
>    Paul> that branch.
>
> If you make changes to your mirror, you can't use it as a mirror
> anymore, so in effect you keep it read-only for *you* but you
> update it from upstream of course.

OK, I see that. So it's a case of "don't do that".

That's fair (to an extent) but I can easily imagine setting up such a
mirror, then without thinking, trying out a "quick change" and once
I'd done that, being left with a "broken" mirror. In that case, I'd
quite likely pop up on this mailing list saying "I broke my mirror -
what do I do now?" (And maybe it's easy to fix, but I'd still feel
confused and a little frustrated).

If I wanted a "readonly mirror", I think I'd be justified in assuming
that when someone gave me instructions, the resulting mirror would
either (a) be actually readonly, or (b) ignore/discard local changes
when I pulled. On the assumption that neither of these is actually
possible, I'd be happy to be told how to make a local mirror, and that
I should simply *treat* it as readonly.

Sorry - I know this is nitpicking. But Martin's comment really did
make me think "hmm, I thought I understood that - did I miss
something?" It's that sort of low-level confusion that makes it hard
to gain confidence that my mental model is accurate. It's not that he
was being unhelpful, or misleading, just that his set of assumptions
(probably complete with an instinctive mental picture of how he'd have
his filesystem laid out with a "mirrors" directory and local branches
of those mirrors) don't match mine, in a way that makes his advice a
lot less helpful to a beginner than he meant it to be.

Paul.