RFC: advisory "branch_status" flag in branch.conf

[vila]

>>>>> Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer at samba.org> writes:

<snip/>

    >> As a better way of handling this, I am proposing an option in
    >> branch.conf called "branch_status" with possible values including at
    >> least "active" and "inactive".  bzr-colo could then use this flag to
    >> hide branches marked with "branch_status = inactive".  The reason that
    >> I bring this up on list is that I wonder if such an option could be
    >> used profitably by other parts of the Bazaar ecosystem (qbzr,
    >> bzr-explorer, etc.)  Interested parties could add other values of the
    >> option for their own purposes.  Also, this option would occupy the
    >> default branch.conf namespace and so the option name "branch_status"
    >> couldn't be used by anyone else.

Thanks for rfc'ing about config option names !

Note that the current plan[1] is to introduce a more formalized name space
to address this kind of issue by prefixing plugin specific options by
the plugin name. In this case, you can just use 'colo.branch.status' and
don't worry about collisions.

<snip/>

    >> Is there any interest out there for standardizing on the option
    >> "branch_status" as a way of marking the state of a branch?

I'm a bit hesitant to share the same option with foreigners ;)

It seems a bit risky to do that without a clear idea about everybody
needs before hand so changes will occur and we'll run in compatibility
hells. As a first step I'd be more comfortable with several options each
tailored to specific needs.

The 'status' name itself is a bit overloaded already, bzr-gardener uses
it (not as a config option though) to reflect that revisions need to be
pulled, pushed or merged into a branch (so it's not a persistent value
requiring to be stored in a config file).

    > That might be useful. There also seems to be a bit of overlap with the
    > branch status setting that's used on Launchpad, perhaps it would make
    > sense to support similar values (Merged, Abandoned, Development,
    > Experimental, Mature).

This definition seem closer to the one bzr-colo is after though so I
won't object if you use 'bzr.branch.status' as long as we manage to
declare it (and probably initialize[2] it to 'Experimental' ?) in bzr-core
when creating a branch.

        Vincent

[1]: http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/devnotes/configuration.html (will
be updated RSN but roughly correct)

[2]: But as with *all* options, be prepared to *not* find it in
branch.conf if the user ever edit the file manually and provide a
default value.