Re: bzr repository ready?

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> How do you manage your bidi branch right now? Is it a CVS branch on
>> the Emacs repository or a set of patches that you store on your
>> machine?
>
> It's a CVS checkout of the trunk, with local changes.  Each "cvs up"
> merges the changes on the trunk with my local changes.  Since no one
> is working on the display engine, I had maybe one or two conflicts in
> several months.  It's really not such a big deal, even with CVS.  I
> don't see how any VCS could "shine" in this use-case.  Maybe I'm
> missing something.

First, you are not using a version control system for your changes: it
would be quite scary to me making large changes to a complex code base
without the ability to undo the changes or inspect how and when they
were introduced. Second, publishing your work requires making a tarball
with the modified sources (or the diff against certain tag of Emacs
CVS).

Using bzr will bring in version control for your work. And you can
publish your emacs variant with full history simply putting a mirror on
a web server and pushing your local changes to it.

Once the bidi support is mature enough to be merged on the official
Emacs sources, bzr will help a lot because others will have the
opportunity to browse your branch and thus know what you changed and why
you changed it. They will be able to get a copy of your branch, test it
and suggest patches. And finally, you will push your changes to the
master Emacs branch with just a command, instead of splitting a large
patch in small pieces and committing them one at a time.

-- 
Óscar