Comment 5 for bug 629150

tor 2011-11-17 klockan 11:41 +0000 skrev Jelmer Vernooij:

> Perhaps we should ask a different question. What is the use case for
> allowing local branch nicks that diverge from the master branch?

Can't think of any. But then I do not see much uses of branch nicks in
that context other than to unify different developers local branch
naming styles to a common project-wide model in the recorded history.

But probably not a good idea to add additional operations to "bzr
update" unless really needed.

branch nicks change very infrequently, and are not version controlled.

I think a reasonable compromize is to have "bzr bind" always set the
local branch nick, not only if the local branch already have a nick (how
it works today)

another note is that it seems it's very hard to remove the nick from a
branch. You can set it to the same as the default value, but it's still
a nick and bzr bind will kindly overwrite it at any time you bind the
branch.

A related question is what do do with the nick on "bzr unbind".

My suggestion is to

a) Change "bzr bind" to always record the nick of the master branch at
the time.
b) Add a "bzr nick --clear" option to remove any nick from a branch

and document that the branch nick is not cleared automatically on "bzr
unbind" or updated unless you "bzr bind" again.

If there is other more creative uses of branch nicks then the branch
nick concept as such probably needs an upgrade, making it a versioned
property somehow.

Regards
Henrik