Re: bzr repository ready?

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> In other words, after doing 

>    bzr branch URL_TO_UPSTREAM_EMACS_TRUNK

> why not just go ahead and edit the files in the directory
> for that branch?

You can definitely do that.  You can then commit those changes locally
with "bzr commit", you can fetch updates from the upstream trunk with
"bzr merge", you can also install those changes into the upstream trunk
with "bzr push".  But the main problem with it in my experience is that
whenever you want to see the local changes that aren't installed yet,
you end up having to do

  bzr diff -r branch:URL_TO_UPSTREAM_EMACS_TRUNK

(which can be shortened to "bzr diff -r submit:") which will need to
contact the remote repository and hence won't work when you're not
connected; furthermore it will show the diff between your branch and the
remote trunk, which will include both your local changes and the changes
you haven't fetched from the remote trunk.  OTOH with a local mirror of
the remote trunk, you can do "bzr diff -r branch:../mirror" (which can
also be shortened to "bzr diff -r submit:") and it will work purely
locally and (assuming you've done a merge since you last updated that
mirror) will only show your local changes.

Note that this mirror can be cheap (like 40KB or so of disk space) since
it doesn't need to contain the actual files (unless you want them to be
there) and your local branch already contains all the needed history
info anyway.


        Stefan