Any plans/needs to extend the fast-import format?

[Ian Clatworthy]

Greg Ward wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Ian
> Clatworthy<ian.clatworthy at canonical.com> wrote:

>> * Multiple author sections in a commit, not just one. (I guess authors
>>  beyond the first wouldn't need the when data so I'm leaning towards
>>  leaving that out.)
> 
> IMHO Bazaar's support for multiple authors is the best argument for
> extending fast-import.

In a world increasingly using Agile development practices like
pair-programming, multiple author support makes a lot of sense. I
believe Monotone has this feature as well.

>> I'm sure more will be required (e.g. empty directory support, handling
>> differences in tag name rules, ghost revisions)
> 
> Now you're getting into increasingly arcane Bazaar functionality.  I
> mean, anyone can understand "directories are first class objects"

As you didn't ask, here's the tag naming issue:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr-fastimport/+bug/386986. I suspect hg is
equally flexible as bzr is wrt tag names so it's a potential issue for
you too.

> But what the heck is a ghost revision?  (Rhetorical
> question: I can STFW if I'm really curious.)

IIUIC, it's a known parent revision that isn't in the repository (yet).
To my knowledge, there's no way to create one in the Bazaar UI but they
can by "created" by various importers. It's per-revision data so an
arbitrary dictionary of 'extra' properties per commit ought to cover
Bazaar's round-tripping needs.

So my requested list of features comes down to:

feature basis-for-changes=last-commit
feature commit-properties
feature multiple-authors

The tag name question remains open in my mind. It may need a new feature
or maybe we just need some tighter rules w.r.t. tag name encoding of
special characters.

Ian C.