lock_* API change

[Russel Winder]

On Fri, 2010-05-14 at 19:26 +1200, Robert Collins wrote:
[ . . . ]
> Its entirely normal for trunk bzr and trunk plugin bzr-FOO to be out
> of sync from time to time. We use this list to talk about things like
> this. I don't know if Jelmer was caught by surprise or not - the merge
> in question was up for a week or so - it wasn't rushed through in any
> sense.

Indeed.  I have full confidence in the management and development
processes.  I guess the constructive point I was trying to make (but
which probably got hidden by the moans) is that plugin developers may
not be actively and attentively tracking the bzr.dev merge queue.  The
question is whether there needs to be a way of flagging coming
"breaking" API changes more widely.  Or perhaps I am missing stuff which
everyone else knows of?
  
> Early feedback is great; dealing with occasional broken dependencies
> is part of the risk of being one of those early testers: all bzr
> developers are in that set, and we're delighted when other people want
> to be in the alpha-test group too. However we make no warranty about
> having a complete stack on the edge.

I think everyone is aware and comfortable that bzr.dev is pre-alpha
testing and therefore there are no warranties.  Moreover there will be
glitches and inconsistencies.

> bzr.dev would meet that constraint at the moment; all code changes get
> reviewed; none of us is going to land a [deliberately] breaking change
> without it being peer reviewed - and that provides prior notification.

I am not sure of the last bit.  From a purely person perspective, I have
no idea what is coming or what consequences there might be and any
updates until I pull bzr.dev each morning.  I don't monitor the
reviewing.  I wonder if a lot of plugin providers are in the same boat?

> I feel that if you want a no-bumps ride, you should be using 2.1.x, or
> the release PPA. nightlies, trunk, and other on-the-edge builds *will*
> break from time to time, and that needs to be factored in in assessing
> whether its right for you.

Definitely.  I keep a full Ubuntu current distribution install of all of
Bazaar as a fall back position.

> I suspect your particular pain point here is that pipeline isn't
> working with the current stable branch, so you have no fallback
> position to switch to. We should fix that [is there a bug?]

I think there were three factors here that pulled together to create a
critical irritation.

1.  (To me) sudden bzr.dev / bzr-svn incompatibility.
2.  Using an ancient bzr-svn for reasons to do with Launchpad.
3.  Not properly "sandboxing" plugins with bzr version.

Jelmer fixed 1 quickly but I didn't see it because of 2, which once
spotted was trivially fixed.  Jelmer pushed me to fixing 3 properly.  So
I should now be fairly immune to all but the most breaking of issues
now. 

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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