Ironing out the upgrade experience

[Martin Pool]

2009/8/6 Martin Albisetti <argentina at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> I've had this in my head for ages, so I thought I'd put it out there
> so it has a chance of actually being addressed  :)
>
> As we approach 2.0 and upgrading formats becomes a key task we want
> our users to perform, ironing out the experience becomes essential.
> There are a few key issues with upgrade that I can think of that need
> addressing, and I'm sure that there's a few that I've missed.
>
> - Upgrading the same branch/repo multiple times gets you into trouble
> if you leave the "backup.bzr" dir around. In cases like Launchpad,
> this is very problematic because you need to start sftp'ing in and
> doing all kinds of crazy thinks. Maybe we should create
> "backup.bzr.1", "backup.bzr.2", etc?

Ian mentioned this yesterday, maybe he has a patch in progress.

> - Upgrading via smart server. Right now, upgrading is crazy for large
> branches because of all the data that needs to be transfered

I started on this a while ago.

> - Upgrade sometimes downgrades. This should be stopped. I understand
> why it's there, but we should provide a different mechanism, command
> or switch for people who want to downgrade

Agree.

> - Provide a way to "upgrade all the branches in this dir". Jelmer has
> a recursive-upgrade plugin that I've hacked to pieces to use at the
> office, but this functionality should really be in core

I think Ian has a pending patch for this.

>
> I'm pretty sure there's bugs filed for most of these issues. Maybe we
> could put together a wiki page to follow up on this particular story?

Yes, I think there are bugs for most of them.

Ideally Launchpad's view of the bug tag 'upgrade' would give you the
big picture on this aspect, similarly to what we have for a milestone,
including both finished and to-be-done bugs.


> - Document and push for a good story to upgrade stacked branches.
> People struggle with this a lot, especially on Launchpad
> - Give users more information on what to do when they run into
> incompatible formats (ie, tell them how to upgrade, and to which
> format). This will become more important as people start to move
> project branches to the new format, and unaware users try to push/pull
> their local branches

These need more discussion as far as just what to do.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>