Re: Basic Bazaar guide for Emacs hackers.

[Óscar Fuentes]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> The setup and workflow described by this page is advertised (by its
> parent "Bzr For Emacs Devs") as ``CVS-like''.

I'll better describe that workflow as "centralized", versus the
"distributed" one described on BzrForEmacsDevs.

> But this isn't really accurate, is it?  The command shown to checkout
> the trunk is this:
>
>     bzr checkout URL_TO_UPSTREAM_TRUNK trunk
>
> However, IIUC, the slightly modified checkout command
>
>     bzr checkout --lightweight URL_TO_UPSTREAM_TRUNK trunk
>
> is a closer equivalent of the CVS checkout, because it only checks out
> the working tree without creating a full local copy of history.

Please note that the guide itself does not pretend to simulate CVS, but
just exploit the concepts familiar to any CVS user for easing his
transition to Bazaar as the Emacs' VCS.

> The history is only needed if one wants to commit locally.  People who
> don't plan on using local commits don't need to pay the extra price of
> larger disk storage and probably also some additional time it takes to
> do a heavyweight checkout.

The guide's goal is not the be exhaustive, but be simple. Mentioning the
--lightweight option would increase complexity explaining one variant
that hardly any Emacs hacker would appreciate once he starts using that
setup. I can expand on this if you are interested.

> OTOH, if we think that a heavyweight checkout is the recommended way,
> then we should at least mention its main benefit -- the local commit.
> Currently, the page only hints on that, but stops short of showing the
> commands to use this potential:

On a previous version of the wiki page there was a brief description of
--local option for `commit'. It was removed following the suggestions of
one the authors of the other guide.

[snip]

> Personally, I would do both: tell about --lightweight as the
> equivalent of CVS, and also tell about the local commits available
> with the heavyweight checkouts.  But that's me.

Thanks for your comments.

-- 
Óscar