Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Future of GNU Arch, bazaar and bazaar-ng ... ?

[Jan Hudec]

On Sun, Aug 21, 2005 at 12:59:58 -0400, Aaron Bentley wrote:
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> Jan Hudec wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 21, 2005 at 12:41:57 -0400, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> > So it behaves similarly to git and mercurial (and monotone), except 
> > mercurial
> > (but not git) will not insist on merging immediately.
> 
> Just to make sure I'm clear: if you merge, and you haven't committed
> since the other branch branched or merged from you, you won't have to
> commit after the merge.  Otherwise, you will have to commit.

Yes, you are clear.

To state a more precise definition, Bazaar-NG only allows one head in
a given tree (each working copy is a branch and vice versa, so I'll call it
together a tree) at any given time. So if what you pull is descendant of your
current head, you end up with one head and all is right, but if it isn't, you
have to merge and commit before doing anything else.

On the contrary, mercurial will just happily live with several heads in one
tree, so you can always pull without merging. Now I don't say that behaviour
is necessary (you can easily make a mirror of that other branch), I am just
stating it is there.

GIT seems to insist on the merge (allow only one head), but allow to have
several named branches is one working copy, each of them with it's own head.
This can serve as a built-in cache of the remote branches. AFAIK Cogito does
not handle these other branches.

On another side-note, git allows to have arbitrary number of parents for
a revision, while mercurial allows at most two (at the current state). The
mercurial folks had to solve this in their git->mercurial gateway some time
ago.

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                                                 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec 
<address@hidden>

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