Comment 7 for bug 494012

Rather than a boolean "disable autopacking completely" flag, how about a configurable limit, something along the lines of: "don't automatically create a pack larger than X". This limit should apply only to autopacking, not to explicit "bzr pack".

This would let one choose, for one's particular circumstances, an appropriate tradeoff between the maximum acceptable hit at commit time, and the (5 * RTT * #packs) hit on every interaction. One could then manage the latter by doing explicit "bzr pack"s at times of one's own choosing.

Note that the limit should be used only as an a-priori estimate when deciding whether to crunch a given set of packs; if, after the fact, the new pack ends up exceeding the limit, *don't* throw it away on that account -- the work has already been done. Obviously, if a single commit exceeds the limit, that's OK; the resulting pack will simply never be autopacked, but will live on its own until the next explicit "bzr pack".