Re: patch vs. overwrite in bzr

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

[snip]

> FWIW, I like having separate branches.  At least for Emacs, and for
> the use case when the changes in the branch are significant (like what
> I had for bidi), co-located branches get in the way because switching
> branches needs to make a lot of changes, and requires a large build if
> not a full bootstrap.

Use out-of-source builds, with a build directory per branch... unless
that collides with Emacs' peculiar practice of putting build products on
the source tree for out-of-source builds.

On addition, when I switch branches from Emacs the relevant function is
advised for storing timestamps of the files of the current branch before
the switch and recover the timestamps of the new branch's files after
the switch, so no rebuild is triggered because some source file was
modified by the switch when the new branch already has an associated up
to date build.

> So having several branches sharing the same
> tree does not gain much, and their disadvantage -- the possibility to
> forget what branch is the current one and mess up -- is not worth that
> gain.
[snip]

vc-git solves this by displaying the current branch name on the
modeline. vc-bzr could do the same if colocated branches gain
popularity.