Should bzr aliases possibly be in their own file?

[Tom Browder]

As a bzr newb who has to maintain multiple hosts, I think it would be
handy to have aliases in their own file which could be version
controlled and kept synchronized between hosts.

I would add a new environment variable, say BZR_USER_ALIASES, to point
to it.  Even better might be a hierarchy of alias files: system-wide,
then personal:

BZR_SYSTEM_ALIASES
BZR_USER_ALIASES

The order of file use by bzr when looking for aliases should then be:

$BZR_SYSTEM_ALIASES
$BZR_HOME/bazaar.conf
$BZR_USER_ALISES
$BZR_HOME/bazaar.conf.session-modified

The last file above would be a new file to handle the use of 'bzr
alias' commands with the new files, but initially generated only if
either of the two new alias files are being used; otherwise, the
normal default file would be used.

I am not sure about two things:

1.  It is unclear to me from the docs whether aliases are looked for
in the location.conf and branch.conf configuration files.  If they
are, what should be their position in the order of search in the
hierarchy above?

2.  Should the new, optional alias-only files should be required to
have the "[ALIASES]" section header word?  I vote no.

I've searched launchpad for "alias" and "config" and only found only
one item remotely similar: 289268 which addresses configuration of
helper programs such as diff.

Is my suggestion feasible?

Thanks for your consideration.

Regards,

-Tom

Thomas M. Browder, Jr.
Niceville, Florida
USA