Proper tracking of file-level operations: rename, directories, merges

[Jared Silva]

On 10/25/2011 09:55 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> On Oct 25, 2011, at 03:47 PM, Ben Finney wrote:
>>> Now, Bazaar has no 'copy' concept:
>>>
>>>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/269095
>>
>> Does it affect behaviour in some manner that is semantically
>> significant? If so, I'm happy to consider that a bug too, if you like.
>
> I do personally consider bzr's lack of a copy function as a bug, but it's one
> of minimal impact to daily work.  Meaning, I rarely have to copy files and
> when I do `cp foo bar; bzr add bar` is an easy enough workaround.

I think the heat for this bug speaks for itself, as it has the second 
highest heat for bzr and is not far behind the first.

You may consider it of minimal impact, and you may consider 'cp foo bar; 
bzr add bar' a valid workaround, but that is based on your use cases.  I 
am sure there are many others, myself included, where their use cases do 
not allow for this as a valid workaround, as it does not track and 
preserve history as many expect from their VCS.  Again, the heat for 
this bug speaks to that.  This bug is the number one feature reason for 
me not switching all of my repositories to bzr, as I need the VCS to 
adequately track and preserve the history of copies for most of my 
repositories.

I think if bzr wants to grow its user base significantly, it should 
specifically target existing svn users, and I bet this is one of the 
features holding many back on svn.

Just my 0-karma opinion.

--Jared