Re: bzr repository ready?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Eli Zaretskii writes:
 > Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> writes:

 > > Besides, using a shared repository is just a disk&time saving trick, it
 > > doesn't affect the workflow otherwise.

N.B.  This is false, even today.  Bazaar now supports commands for
interrogating the shared repository.  The most important in daily use
is "branches", which lists the branches currently available from that
repository.

 > So when to use a shared repository and when not?

(Core) Emacs developers will always want to use a shared repository.
The penalty for using one for even a single branch is very small; as
soon as you have more than one, time and disk savings build rapidly.

The *only* times one wants to *avoid* use of a shared repository are
(1) for casually browsing the source and related contributions (eg, you
    occasionally have one-line fixes), you plan to send patches to
    the developers for them, and you expect *never* to participate
    actively in project development;
(2) when the project wishes to *enforce* a centralized workflow on the
    developers.

Many important enhancements to bzr (like the "pipeline" add-on, which
helps to manage a "stack" of patches, like Andrew Morton's famous
"quilt" script) depend on "cheap branching", which shared repositories
provide.  I'm not going to go into details here, because you may not
ever need those (and there are often alternatives), but having the
shared repository available from the start makes life much more
pleasant in many such scenarios.