Altering branches on launchpad leads to no information for branches.

[Russel Winder]

There is a systemic problem in DVCS that the mainline has no knowledge
of who has branched a branch.  This means when there are critical
changes there is no automatic notification possible. 

There is a systemic problem in Bazaar/Lauchpad in that Bazaar stores the
real URL not the Launchpad URL of a branch branched from Launchpad at
the time of setting.  If the binding at Launchpad changes then the
branch becomes broken. 

The example of the day is lp:bzr-git.  Sometime in the last 36 hours the
owner of this branch has been changed from ~bzr to ~bzr-git.  This means
the branch I had has been forcibly removed as a peer without any local
action here.

The solution is simple: delete the branch and rebranch, but I only find
out about this by reading my logs -- I update all my branches and clones
using a script run by cron.

OK so I spotted it, but there is something seriously unsatisfactory that
this is "management by handling unexpected breakages" rather than
"management by notified change".

I wonder if Launchpad should be made to issue a "This branch has moved"
notice instead of the user getting:

Using saved parent location: bzr
+ssh://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bzr/bzr-git/trunk/
bzr: ERROR: Not a branch: "bzr
+ssh://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bzr/bzr-git/trunk/".

Bazaar handles so carefully files moved within in a branch and yet is so
cavalier about peer bindings of branches being changed without explicit
action from the user.

-- 
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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