Call for testing of colocated branch support in bzr.dev

[Jelmer Vernooij]

Hi,

Support for colocated branches in bzr.dev has now progressed to a level 
where it is actually usable. At the moment, colocated branch support 
still requires the 'development-colo' format. This should be merged back 
into the default ('2a') format for 2.5.0 so it would work out of the box 
with existing branches.

Using it should be fairly easy once you have a branch in the 
'development-colo' format:

$ bzr init --development-colo foo
$ cd foo
$ bzr branches
* (default)
$ bzr switch -b first-colo-branch
$ bzr switch -b second-colo-branch
$ bzr branches
   first-colo-branch
* second-colo-branch
$ bzr switch first-colo-branch
* first-colo-branch
   second-colo-branch
$ bzr rmbranch second-colo-branch
$ bzr branches
* first-colo-branch

etc.

switch and rmbranch are currently the only commands that directly accept 
a colocated branch name. We're working on adding similar support to the 
other commands, such as merge, pull, push, missing, branch and log. 
Until then, you can still address colocated branches for those commands 
by using their internal URL. It's a bit icky, but it works:

$ bzr log file:///tmp/foo,branch=first-colo-branch
....

or (if you're in the branch)

$ bzr log file:,branch=first-colo-branch
...

The known bugs for colocated branches can be found here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bugs?field.tag=colocated

If you hit other bugs, please file a report. It would also be interested 
to hear your general impression of colocated branches, and what you like 
and don't like about it.

Cheers,

Jelmer