Roadmap for Bazaar...

John Szakmeister john at szakmeister.net
Tue Sep 21 16:59:06 BST 2010


On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at canonical.com> wrote:
[snip]
>>  * Revision ids that are easier to reference than Bazaar's revision
>>ids.  An issue that I've been running into a lot with newbies is the
>>fact that revision numbers can change easily.  Bazaar won't think
>>twice about re-ordering the mainline, especially if your pushing back
>>to a branch, and you've merged the tip of that branch in it already:
>>   bzr branch <main> <work>
>>   # Hack, hack on work
>>   bzr merge :parent # into <work>
>>   bzr push :parent
>>
>>It'd be nice if Bazaar didn't allow that push by default (something
>>that I think you guys have talked about).  But if you aren't going to
>>do that, then I think it's a good idea to have revision ids that you
>>can refer to easily that don't change.  You have the latter, but they
>>aren't easy to refer to.
>
> Hmm.  I often work this way, at least for projects where I'm the main or sole
> contributor.  I find it a bit more convenient than merging the work branch
> back into trunk and then pushing the trunk.  The difference in artifacts
> doesn't bother me in those cases.  While I could probably change the way I
> work if Bazaar decided to disallow that for improved user experience, I would
> like a configuration variable to re-enable it.

I didn't do a good job explaining, but I think if Bazaar had better
revision ids, then you wouldn't need this extra facility.  And, FWIW,
I do set append_revisions_only on the hosted repositories, but it's a
bit strong of a policy (there have been a few times when we
intentionally wanted to re-order the revs, or push up a new version of
the branch that didn't share all the same history).

>>I hope you don't mind the criticism.  I've been doing a lot of
>>educating lately (writing a class for Bazaar and teaching folks in our
>>company) and thought I'd share the pain points.  We like Bazaar, and
>>especially the QBzr plugin, but feel it could be easier.
>
> Definitely!  It always amazes me to realize how much pain I've forgotten once
> I'm proficient with any particular tool.  It's really helpful to capture those
> pain points when you start out, or when you rediscover them by teaching others.

I agree!  It's definitely been an educational experience on my part
trying to explain all the niggles. :-)

-John



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