[RFC] branch --bind

[David Ingamells]

Algis Kabaila wrote:
> On Monday 11 January 2010 17:43:09 Martin Pool wrote:
>   
>> 2010/1/11 Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org>:
>>     
>>> Martin Pool writes:
>>>       
>
> As a simple minded ordinary user with limited experience in svn repositories I 
> find this discussion well beyond me.  By now I've given up trying to follow it.  
> However, as I have used --bind option in the past, I do look at this thread 
> occasionally.
>
> It has been mentioned that this thread is a sink of time and energy that could 
> be better used for the development activity.  I share this view.
>
> I switched to bazaar quite innocently after I read a few documents - I liked 
> the style and thought the high standard of presentation meant that I was 
> taking up the use of a mature versioning tool.  Some threads convinced me 
> otherwise.
>
> OTOH,   Bazaar and bzr-explorer seem to work satisfactorily and "Launchpad" 
> seems a good facility.
>
> However, the ability of threads similar to this to absorb subscribers time and 
> energy, even without contributing to it is such that I feel very disappointed 
> with myself for having moved to bazaar. I feel great urge to quit bazaar for 
> good.  Alas, I am kind of hooked to it and to launchpad...
>
> For an ordinary user, such as I, it is a great disappointment that the 
> *documentation*, which definitely needs updating, remains in the same state of 
> completion (viz.  it does not even mention bzr-explorer, the GUI that window 
> users will use, first and last! I do not use windows, but 90%+ PC users are on 
> windows).
>
> Why cant we have a few (no more than 3 to 4) workflows explained fully, so that 
> a newbie can just choose one to her liking and follow it until she succeeds to 
> get confused by the complex discussions in threads like this one?
>
> I am sure that splitting hair is useful (though I don't know where, but 
> intellignt people are doing it, so it must be useful somewhere).
>
> OldAl,
> Frustrated and cranky.
>
>   
Algis,
Like you I too am a plain user of bazaar. My experience with bazaar is 
now approaching 2 years and I have followed a good number of threads in 
this forum during that time. I feel that I must respond to your criticism.

    * The broader bazaar team - both the Canonical teams and the unpaid
      contributors - have always responded with friendliness, openness,
      professionalism and respect, even when messages from others could
      be interpreted as rude. In this sense the bazaar team behaves in a
      very mature way.
    * I have seen a number of improvements come out of such discussions
      and have regularly learned more about dcvs and bazaar from
      following the discussions.
    * While the discussion language is English, not all the
      correspondents have full command of the English language [no
      criticism intended, if I had to communicate in Russian or German
      my messages  would be completely unintelligible] and sometimes
      messages can be difficult to understand or can be misunderstood.
    * This forum is the discussion point for a globally dispersed team -
      I know that at least 3 continents are represented. Every developer
      needs to be able to brainstorm with colleagues and that is what
      you are seeing here. The broader bazaar team cannot go and sit
      together in the coffee corner for such a brainstorming session:
      this forum is their coffee corner, and I feel privileged that I am
      allowed to listen in and occasionally join in.
    * There are a number of very capable people in the team,
      encompassing a broad range of skills. They are aware of the need
      for good documentation and are working on it, however the tool has
      been developing so fast that there is some inevitable lag. If you
      look back in the forum you will see that the GUI is a very young
      development and that this GUI development is being led by someone
      who both believes in the need for good documentation and actively
      contributes to it.
    * bazaar as a tool has a core of commands and flows that are mature,
      and my team has been using bzr since spring 2008 with many fewer
      problems that we experienced with the expensive and 'mature'
      Continuus tool.
    * As a whole bzr is not mature - any tool that is developing at such
      a pace cannot be called mature. A significant reason for this is
      that the dvcs concept and the technology supporting it are
      themselves not mature. The bazaar team are at the leading edge of
      the development of this technology and are often breaking new
      ground. This immaturity can be seen too in the problems of
      choosing terminology - they are often having to invent and define
      that terminology themselves.
    * In the early days some choices were made that are now seen as
      unfortunate, as you have seen in recent discussions - and you have
      participated in.
    * Bazaar is a tool for software developers, so the target audience
      should be considered as having some general technical awareness.
      Such a person is going to prefer the command line much more often
      that the general computer user - because the command line can give
      you much more subtlety and power than any GUI can.
    * some of the team have only experienced the use of VCS with open
      source projects and have limited knowledge of the full breadth of
      the application of code management, especially in a commercial
      environment. This occasionally means that they fail to consider
      some valid use cases when they make design decisions. This has
      happened for example with the implementation of stacked branches.

My advice is to stick with your original choice :-)
David.