Ubuntu Documentation / Bzr

[Jonathan Jesse]

On Saturday 18 August 2007 10:10:42 Matthew East wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Steve contacted me about this subject and Matthew has emailed me about
> it too in the past so I thought a group discussion would be helpful.
> I'm writing to the mailing list too so that everyone can contribute
> their ideas.
>
> I'd like to hear what people think about this issue. There seems to be
> quite a substantial push behind bzr, and while from my own point of
> view I find it a little bit hard to get too excited one way or another
> about what version control system we are using, I can see that it's
> worth at least discussing.
>
> We've been using bzr a bit recently for creating a branch of
> customised Gnome documentation for use in Ubuntu [1], so I've
> experienced how it works a bit, although I'm still only a beginner.
> Please correct my analysis if it is wrong.
>
> [1] https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-doc/gnome-user-docs/ubuntu-changes
>
> The Documentation Team is made up of many volunteers each of who gives
> as much time as they can to the project, depending on their
> availability. For this reason we use a centralised model of
> development where each person commits directly to a repository. While
> I'm open to discussion, I suspect that this is something that we will
> wish to continue.
>
> As I see them, the advantages that bzr would give us in such a
> workflow would be:
>
>  * Launchpad integration - easier control of the group of persons who
> can commit to the repository.
>  * For contributors, the ability to submit bundles rather than patches
> so that their version control information is preserved.
>
> The disadvantages over our current workflow are:
>
>  * Speed seems poor compared to svn: because the whole revision
> history is downloaded when branching, there is more material to
> download.
>  * Bzr's feedback during upload/download is pretty bad - for example
> when checking out a branch of our repository the status indicator
> generally starts at 30%, takes an hour to get to 50%, then jumps
> quickly to 100%.
>
> To be honest, (although I'm slightly concerned about the speed issue)
> both the advantages and the disadvantages at the moment seem
> relatively insignificant. It may be that they don't warrant changing
> version control systems at this stage, which would require a certain
> amount of effort, rewriting of our documentation, and generally as
> contributors getting used to a new system.
>
> However, I think it's likely that in the future there will be some
> more substantial advantages. For example, I'm told that there are
> plans for Launchpad to support shared repositories, which will permit
> revision history to be stored on the serverside only and improve
> download speeds. Maybe there will be other improvements too.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> --
> Matthew East
> http://www.mdke.org
> gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF

I have been using bzr for some minor doc work, Keep Manual and Adept Manual, 
and have really enjoyed how it works.  I have not noticed the speed issue 
that Matt mentions, but maybe because my patches are so small.  I have also 
enjoyed the code browsing function built into.

https://code.launchpad.net/~jjesse/keep/keep-doc1
http://codebrowse.launchpad.net/~jjesse/keep/keep-doc1/changes
http://codebrowse.launchpad.net/~jjesse/keep/keep-doc1/revision/jjesse%40hudson.serverpronto.com-20070605003751-b237790e3977a786?start_revid=jjesse%40hudson.serverpronto.com-20070605003751-b237790e3977a786

For how it would look....