How can we ensure Bazaar (bzr) remains active?

[Richard Wilbur]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 7:34 PM, Kevin <m1ndstr3ngthapps at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, Bazaar users/devs:
>

Greetings Kevin, welcome to the Bazaar development mailing list!

> I'm a professional software engineer and have been using Mercurial (hg) DVCS
> for about a year. I've tried Git but I did not like it, Mercurial was much
> more user-friendly. These two SCM projects are very active; lots of
> contributors committing often to trunk. I just recently discovered Bazaar
> (bzr) and I have found it to be the very best, user-friendly, intuitive
> DVCS; more than any other.
>
> Sadly, the latest stable release is over 2 years old, and the latest stable
> Windows release is over 3 years old! :-( This detracts potential users from
> using bzr, thinking that it must be not well supported; or that it is not as
> popular as git and hg because it is somehow "not as good".

That is basically the time frame when bzr development transitioned
from being shepherded by a team of software developers dedicated
full-time to bzr, to a team of whomever was interested enough to
volunteer what time and effort they could afford.

What OS(es) do you use for development?  Help with updating the
Windows release would certainly be appreciated (from anyone).

Since we use Test-Driven Development and have a fairly extensive test
suite (which must pass before any branch is merged into trunk), a
number of developers actually use the trunk on a day-to-day basis.

> I would love to contribute and help fix bugs and implement new features to
> ensure that this excellent SCM project continues with a healthy development
> community.

We look forward to your contributions whether bug fixes or new
features!  You've already completed the first steps for participation:
 create a Launchpad account and join the mailing list.  The next thing
you need to do in order to start pushing branches to Launchpad is to
upload your SSH public key to your Launchpad account.

> I've already switched my projects to use bzr and have begun to use
> Launchpad.

Your perspective comparing and contrasting your experience with
bzr/Launchpad versus git/? and hg/? can also be a contribution in
helping us improve bzr/(various hosting options) and avoid pitfalls of
other packages.

> I joined the bazaar mailing list today, asked questions in Ask Ubuntu and
> Ubuntu's FB page, and have submitted a request in bazaar's Launchpad page to
> join the bzr-core team (request currently pending).

Good job making use of the available resources.  This mailing list is
a good place to discuss the development of bzr, ask questions, propose
answers, etc.  Another place that you may encounter bzr developers is
the IRC channel #bzr on irc.freenode.net

> Please let me know anything else I can do to help.

Feel free to browse the bugs and ask questions on this list.  How
comfortable are you with Python?  If you find a bug the piques your
interest:
1.  Determine whether you can reproduce it.
2.  Contact the assignee to inquire regarding current status of
resolution.  They may be willing to turn it over to you, possibly with
some idea of how to resolve it.
3.  Create your fix by the Test-Driven Development strategy:
    a.  Make a test that fails with the bug.
    b.  Fix the code till the test passes.
    c.  Commit your changes.
4.  Push your fixes up to a new branch on Launchpad and create a merge proposal.
5.  Participate in the review process on Launchpad by responding to
reviewers questions and concerns.

Once the branch is approved it should be merged into trunk fairly quickly.

> I want the Bazaar DVCS to
> be more active, I think it's a great software tool! :-) We cannot (and
> should not) allow such an awesome DVCS to fall into a state of being unused,
> ignored, and eventually abandoned. Rather, let's improve it, spread it, and
> use it!

Indeed.  Thank you for joining the effort.  With your help we should
be able to make our next release sooner.

Sincerely,
Richard