Higher level methods in bzrlib for library users

[Jelmer Vernooij]

Hi Tim,

On Fri, 2010-12-03 at 10:04 +1300, Tim Penhey wrote:
> I brought this up with Martin Pool earlier this week I think, and I want to 
> take the idea to the list before I take it any further.
> 
> My situation is one where I use bzr as a python library through bzrlib, but 
> I'm not a bazaar hacker, nor do I have a detailed in-depth understanding of 
> the bazaar internals.  I am a regular bzr user though and have been for over 
> four years now.
> 
> What I'm proposing is that we create a number of higher level methods in 
> bzrlib for library users.  There are other projects like bzr-xml, loggerhead, 
> bzr-explorer, the QT and gtk bindings and I'm sure others that all implement 
> very similar methods.  We should normalise these, make them available as part 
> of the library and have them tested and consistent.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. 

Gary has started preparing the visual graph building code from qbzr for
inclusion in bzrlib, with the intent of having bzr-gtk (and perhaps
loggerhead?) use it as well.
https://code.launchpad.net/~garyvdm/bzr/loggraphviz/+merge/41146
(beware, page contains ASCII art).

There are a bunch of other things duplicated between bzr-gtk and qbzr
that can probably be shared. To mind comes the storage of commit
messages of uncommitted revisions so they can be suggested when the user
attempts to do a new commit. Another is per-file commit messages.

> I've found some sample code for some of these on the bazaar wiki, but there 
> are others which I've not found.  These methods are pretty trivial to write if 
> you have the in-depth understanding of bzrlib that the core developers have, 
> but not obvious to those that don't.
> 
> In particular the methods that I'd like to see would be:
> 
>  * Getting the files that have changed in a given revision (or revision range)
Does Repository.get_revision_delta() perhaps do what you need?

>  * Getting the diff for a particular revision (or revision range)
>  * Getting the diff for a particular file in a particular revision
>  * Getting the mainline revisions that had modified a particular file
I wonder where we should put these methods - Repository is already big
enough as is, but it does seem the most appropriate place for them. 

> Martin suggested starting by filing bugs for each method I'd like to see in 
> bzrlib and tag them with a special tag.  This would allow us to track what is 
> done, who is doing it, and also perhaps some low hanging fruit for those who 
> know enough to write the methods that will help others.
Happy to help where I can. :-)

Cheers,

Jelmer
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