RFC: advisory "branch_status" flag in branch.conf

[Neil Martinsen-Burrell]

In bzr-colo, there has been a request to provide a way to hide
branches in a colocated workspace from being listed:
http://pad.lv/767332.  I've implemented this in a roundabout manner by
hiding (by default) branches whose names start with "."  Martin
pointed out that renaming branches is not an ideal way to deal with
this problem, since it can break links to other branches and
checkouts.

As a better way of handling this, I am proposing an option in
branch.conf called "branch_status" with possible values including at
least "active" and "inactive".  bzr-colo could then use this flag to
hide branches marked with "branch_status = inactive".  The reason that
I bring this up on list is that I wonder if such an option could be
used profitably by other parts of the Bazaar ecosystem (qbzr,
bzr-explorer, etc.)  Interested parties could add other values of the
option for their own purposes.  Also, this option would occupy the
default branch.conf namespace and so the option name "branch_status"
couldn't be used by anyone else.

Now that Vincent's "bzr config" command has landed, it is very easy to
manipulate the contents of branch.conf, so marking a branch as
inactive is as simple as doing "bzr config branch_status=inactive" and
eliminating all mention of the option can be done with "bzr config
--remove branch_status".

Is there any interest out there for standardizing on the option
"branch_status" as a way of marking the state of a branch?

-Neil