Call for testing of colocated branch support in bzr.dev

[Jelmer Vernooij]

On 01/20/2012 01:09 PM, Wouter van Heyst wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 12:57:03 +0100, Jelmer Vernooij wrote:
>
> …
>
>>>>>> 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.
>>>>> This is great news, but is it wise to put in 2.5.0 something that
>>>>> (AFAIK) was not in any of the 2.5 beta releases?
>>>>>
>>>>> Apologies if I'm missing something.
>>>> The development-colo format has been in the 2.5 series since one of the
>>>> earlier betas. It's basically the same thing as 2a except that it has a
>>>> different format string, and an extra directory "branches" which gets
>>>> created as soon as you create colocated branches.
>>> I meant the 2a format _after_ the merge.  That one was never seen in
>>> the 2.5 series, right?
>> It was, under the name "development-colo". There is no other
>> difference between that format and 2a as it exists in bzr.dev at the
>> moment.
> But there might be breakage from "2a" suddenly not being exactly what it
> was before?  I don't know what that would be, but the idea makes me
> slightly uncomfortable.

The only new thing is going to be the "branches" directory in .bzr/ that 
new bzr versions will use. Older versions ignore other data in .bzr as 
they always have.

We could add a new format and have users explicitly upgrade to that, but 
that means even the repository and active branch in the control 
directory will be inaccessible for users of older versions of bzr. And 
it complicates matters for users wanting to use colocated branches, 
because they have to explicitly upgrade.

Cheers,

Jelmer