Re: base

[Uday S Reddy <u.s.reddy@cs.bham.ac.uk>]

On 8/26/2010 12:01 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> OK, if it's not necessary, do it.  Specifically, explain why pushing
> directly from a working branch to the upstream repository "just like
> a CVS commit" (which has got to be as simple and conventional as it
> gets, right?) is a bad idea in Bazaar.  No references to the DAG are
> allowed, because they're unnecessary, right?

Ok, let me take a crack at this.

You have a local mirror, which has a pull/push relationship to the upstream, 
and a working branch, which has a pull/push relationship to the local mirror. 
Now you push from the working branch to upstream.  Let us say revisions 
101...103 get pushed.  Next I pull into the local mirror.  These revisions get 
pulled there.  And, then, sometime later, I pull from the local mirror to the 
working branch.  Will I get new copies of 101...103 into the working branch, or 
will Bazaar know that they were already there?

I haven't got a clue!

My strategy with Bazaar is generally to do only the operations that I know to 
work.  These are either the workflows already covered in the documents, or 
others that are reasonably similar to them.  There isn't enough information out 
there to help me figure out what will happen with tricky flows like these. 
And, I don't want to end up in a deep soup with a corrupted repository.  So, if 
I accidentally ended up in this situation, I would play it safe by deleting the 
working branch and creating a new one.

If I actually do a circular push-pull without realizing that I was doing it and 
it actually worked, I will probably realize later that Bazaar handles cycles 
ok, and be comfortable doing it again in future.  So, I am really like a monkey 
playing a piano.  Or, maybe, the piano is playing me!

Cheers,
Uday