Bazaar still below the radar when evaluating VCS tools

[Ali Sabil]

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Parth Malwankar
<parth.malwankar at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 7:47 PM, Joke de Buhr <joke at seiken.de> wrote:
>> On Friday 26 February 2010 07:47:00 Ben Finney wrote:
>>> Joke de Buhr <joke at seiken.de> writes:
>>> > It doesn't cover darcs, fossil, monotone and svk either.
>>>
>
> ......
>
>>
>>
>>
>> Apart of that some things where bazaar is way better than git but aren't
>> emphasized that much but may be especially important for businesses:
>>  - central server workflow like svn (checkin, checkout)
>>  - smart server via apache:
>>    - support for virtual users (ldap, mysql, postgresql)
>>    - fully encrypted (passwords and data)
>>    - byzantine fault tolerance
>>    - permissions on branch level (stacked branches)
>>    - server hooks
>>  - offline mode (unbind)
>>  - loggerhead gui
>>
>> If a business would use git and requires full encryption they need to use git
>> over webdav. Therefore they can't have server hooks and anyone with a valid
>> password (stolen or hacked) can use any webdav client to delete the entire
>> repository.
>>
>> With bazaar's smart server they could only add (junk) revisions but the
>> original data would still be left intact and the original state could easily
>> be restored by branching.
>>
>
> I think I should add my reasons for switch to bzr to the list :-)
>
> I decided to move to a DVCS sometime during bzr 1.13, hg 1.1 and
> git (1.??) timeframe. I needed to run my DVCS on a hosting server
> on which I didn't have rights build and install software (C code). hg
> didn't get pure python support till 1.2. git was definitely out. With bzr
> I really liked that I could untar bzr in a folder and start using it by
> just putting it in the path. Some other things I liked was support for
> ftp, sftp (I was using both for some time before switching to ssh). I
> also like bzr support for explicit file tracking. Though I worked mostly
> on Linux, Windows being a first class citizen was important to me
> as I sometimes need to work on Windows.
>
> A lot has changed since then (in all the big three DVCSes), but
> some of these advantages like ftp, sftp support still hold (I think).
> But somehow this doesn't seem to get highlighted in DVCS
> discussions.
>
> The way I see it, the biggest reason I stick to bzr is because it is
> flexible enough to cater to different needs (not just workflows
> but also the constraints I had to deal with that time).
> To add, bzr-svn, bzr-git and bzr-hg are really cool plugins.
>

I also believe bzr should work more its marketing. bzr is actually
very powerful, but most people just don't know about its features.
Maybe the bzr homepage should have a "activity oriented" section,
explaining in which situation and how bzr can be used.