Bound branch implementation

[Erik Bågfors]

> One of the specific reasons for bound branches is to enable shared
> remote repositories, where you want to make sure everyone is up-to-date.
> In the standard case, a branch won't change between bound and unbound
> very often. I find that easier to enforce than requiring me to always
> remember to do a commit with '-s'.

Agreed, putting the branch in and out of bind-mode is better.
I do NOT belive in having to learn to many strange options to
commands.  -s is what?  -f is what? etc.  Much better to have
pull/push/merge/bind at the top level and let them do "sane" things
without options.

> binding is a specific statement that "I don't want a commit to succeed
> if I'm out of date". A lot of people like this model. Certainly it is
> more familiar to people who have used CVS/Arch/SVN/etc.

I think it's a must.

> I'm even thinking that we should set up a policy so that the default
> behavior of "bzr branch" is to be bound (make it per-user configurable).
> That makes everything easier for an admin who is trying to get everyone
> to work together, rather than trying to track down where everyone is
> committing things.

I'd say that if what you branch from is writeable and none-local, it
could be the default. For "bzr branch http://...." it should unbound
and for "bzr branch branch1 branch2" it should be unbound. For "bzr
branch scp://blaha/blaha" it could make sense to have it bounded. But
this inconsistency could be .. well... inconsistent and confusing.

> I am happy to hear alternative possibilities. But the above work flow is
> very difficult to scale above a 1-1 relationship, since you have the
> problem Erik mentioned, where a commit into one branch, needs to
> successfully commit into multiple other branches. We can always add
> 2-phase commit, but it seems to be unnecessary overhead at this point.

[lot's of stuff cut]


> Keep thinking about it, see where it leads you. I'm curious how it would
> all work out.

Agreed, the GUI ideas are interesting.  I like the idea of drag and
drop to do pull, merge and cherry-picking :)

Erik