bzr memory usage

[Andrew Bennetts]

Dimitrios Apostolou wrote:
> I thought I'd measure memory usage of the following command, hoping
> it would be minimal, since it doesn't download any metadata, as I
> understand it.
> 
> bzr checkout --lightweight -v lp:gcc gcc-co-light/

checkout --lightweight is currently only optimised for local use.  As you've
seen it currently performs pretty horridly over the network :(

The primary bug tracking this is <https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/762330>,
although there may be others.

It's probably moderately easy to improve, it just hasn't been the top of
anyone's to-do list.  Part of the concern is that even if we make the initial
checkout --lightweight over the network reasonably fast that they're likely
still be painfully slow to use after that.  It's just not what lightweight
checkouts are designed for.  There is a use case of “I just want the current
state of the tree and then no further bzr operations” though, and we probably
can and should support that much better, although not necessarily via
lightweight checkouts.  Is that your case?

-Andrew.