Local commit and shelves (was: Experiences with Bazaar in a Commercial Environment)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Stefan Monnier writes:

 > I think we're on to something here:

You're welcome.

 > changes, of things committed with "commit --local".
 > Some of the problems:
 > - after "bzr update", the "commit --local" commit is largely lost:
 >   There should be a way to name it, check it out again, diff against it,
 >   so as to be able to go back to the "before update" state.  I suspect
 >   that there is such a way already, but it's at least not obvious
 >   enough for this user.

ISTR there's a way to name the merge parents of a merged but
uncommitted workspace (which gives exactly what you want), and Robert
Collins told me once how to list existing heads in the DAG (even if
they don't correspond to branches in the repo; unfortunately, I forgot
what it is).  The only potential problem is that there's nothing in
the DAG to show that this was an "emergency" commit to workaround
"can't commit".  This can be solved by convention (appropriate commit
message) if it really needs to be solved.

Note that a commit --local is not the same as what happens if you
checkout an earlier commit and start committing from there (=~ rebase,
where you get a dangling head with no way to name it except for
tracing the ancestry of all commits and listing those with no
children).