Evaluating Bazaar in a CVS environment.

[Andy Walker]

Alaa Salman <alaasalman <at> terra.net.lb> writes:

> But so, say you want to test your changes... Having only a few files
> that you want to modify would not allow you to do so. How would you
> build the project?
>
That's a very good question.  But what of the case of php web applications or
applications built on perl that don't require "building" per se?  They only
require that the latest version of a particular file be in place.

> Plus, if you don't want to waste space for example... host the "main"
> branch on some server, and then do a lightweight checkout and hack on
> it. I guess this would be working in a similar fashion to how a
> centralized revision control system would work.
>
Yes, this would save space on the local machine initially, but the main issue I
was talking about above would be avoiding duplicating a source tree with many
thousands of files if you only need to change 6 files in three separate
directories.

This would be ameliorated somewhat by splitting these directories into their
own logical units as mentioned above, but then it gets into the other issue of
needing to modify files in three directories-projects of equal level for one
particular task and the ability to group these three separate(?) branches into
a logical unit signifying that they come from the same task.

> I believe that you're still thinking in the CVS terms of files, while in
> a DVCS like bazaar, you need to think of branches as sort of a single unit.
> 
No, I have a decent idea of HOW it's supposed to work and of the notions of
branches etc, I was just under the impression that many different branches
could operate off of the same working tree without requiring a separate
checkout (i.e. an entire separate copy of that entire section of the source
code) for each branch.