Merge algorithms

[Andrew Bennetts]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 08:49:15 +1300
> > From: Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net>
> > Cc: Andrew Bennetts <andrew.bennetts at canonical.com>, bazaar at lists.canonical.com
> > 
> > On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 5:36 AM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu.org> wrote:
> > > Perhaps I'm missing something.  Can I get the plugin write something
> > > into .bzr.log, so I could be sure it is being invoked?
> > 
> > bzr should log that its loaded the plugin :)
> 
> It didn't.  So that must mean I goofed somehow with locations.conf.

(Or it may mean the plugin isn't being loaded at all: check what "bzr
plugins" reports, but I don't think this is your problem.)

> Perhaps I got it wrong, but my understanding was that I need to create
> `.bzr/branch/locations.conf' under the branch's top directory, and put
> there these two lines:
> 
> [/foo/bar]
> changelog_merge_files = ChangeLog
> 
> where "/foo/bar" is the absolute file name of the branch's top
> directory, the one where I create `.bzr/branch/locations.conf'.  Is
> that right, or did I mess up?

You messed up, or more accurately: I messed up the instructions.  They're
not technically wrong, but they are (obviously!) confusing because they
silently assume you know exactly what I mean when I say “locations.conf” or
“branch.conf”.

The confusion is that there are two quite different places you can configure
this plugin, but they have not very distinct names: in per-user
configuration file (~/.bazaar/locations.conf) or in a per-branch
configuration file ($my_branch/.bzr/branch/branch.conf).  Unfortunately I've
confused you so that you've tried to use a configuration file that doesn't
exist as far as Bazaar as concerned ($my_branch/.bzr/branch/branch.conf).

The distinction between “$HOME/.bazaar” and “.bzr” is a bit too easy to
miss, especially when “$HOME” is written as “~”.  There's an open bug about
moving ~/.bazaar to a more standard location (under ~/.config or
something?), which would perhaps help, although the transition is likely to
be a bit painful.

So, in this case I think you need to do one of:

  1. cat .bzr/branch/locations.conf >> ~/.bazaar/.locations.conf
     rm .bzr/branch/locations.conf

  or

  2. grep -v \\\[ .bzr/branch/locations.conf >> .bzr/branch/branch/conf
     rm .bzr/branch/locations.conf

i.e. move the configuration to one of the per-user locations.conf (including
section heading defining the location), or the per-branch branch.conf (no
section heading required).

For reference, the configuration files are hopefully documented fully and
properly at
<http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/latest/en/user-reference/configuration-help.html#configuration-files>
(and summarised version that serves as an overview is at
<http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/latest/en/user-guide/configuring_bazaar.html>).

I think I'll tweak bzr-changelog-merge so that you can pass a -D debug flag
to make it report on if it is finding configuration settings, and if it is
finding files matching those settings, etc.

I also clearly need to tweak the help text, but perhaps I should actually
just remove most of the attempt at quick start help and refer to the main
bzr docs for configuration?  I'm not sure.  Suggestions are welcome!

-Andrew.