New branch created accidentally

[John Arbash Meinel]

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On 1/26/2011 12:13 PM, Eric Siegerman wrote:
> On 1/26/2011 3:48 AM, Ewan Milne wrote:
>> One specific corner case: if one has a shared repo, location <repo>,
>> and a branch below <branch>, then one accidentally pushes to <repo>
>> instead of <repo>/<branch>. This results in a new branch created in
>> the same location as <repo>, so the new branch can't be removed by
>> deleting the directory. I think that deleting the <repo>/.bzr/branch
>> directory will remove the branch - is that correct?
> 
> Ouch!  I'm surprised that's even possible -- I'd have expected
> bzr to complain.  But I've just tested it, and it succeeds.
> This behaviour seems dangerous; because it's a corner case that
> one won't be expecting, one could easily fall into the trap Ewan
> describes, thus accidentally nuking the entire shared repo.
> 
> So the question is, is it useful?  If not, I think bzr should
> refuse to do it.  Do you agree?

The original use case was that you can define whatever naming structure
that you want for your project. For example you could do:

 bzr branch $URL/project
    trunk of the project
 bzr branch $URL/2.3
    a release series for the project
 bzr branch $URL/2.3/feature
    an in progress feature that is targeted at the 2.3 series

Most people seem to have decided that they don't want a nested
namespace. So they only want to be able to do:

 bzr branch $URL/project/trunk project
 bzr branch $URL/project/series/2.3
 bzr branch $URL/project/features/2.3-feature

So instead of using '/' to denote hierarchy they use sibling directories
and redundant naming. (2.3-feature rather than 2.3/feature).

Is there sufficient momentum in that space that bzr should *enforce*
that policy? I've gone from "no" to "maybe". I don't think I'm at
"definitely" yet.

> 
> What about with --use-existing-dir?  I lean towards refusing even
> then, on the assumption that --use-existing-dir is intended to
> let you turn a totally non-bzr (and typically empty) directory
> into a branch, not to reconfigure an existing bzr-controlled
> directory -- and especially not into something weird and
> unexpected.
> 
>   - Eric

John
=:->
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