Have to remember to name initial branch when starting a local colocated branch

[Jonathan Lange]

This bug could also be characterized as "switch -b" doesn't actually create a new branch when the only branch is the default branch.

I almost always want to have a pristine local copy of the trunk branch of the project I'm working on, and I almost always want to call that branch 'trunk'. Whenever I start working on a project using colocated branches with Bazaar, I have to remember to do 'bzr switch -b trunk' as the first thing after I fetch the branch. Otherwise, I lose my pointer to the trunk branch.

e.g.

 $ bzr branch lp:foo
 $ bzr branches
 * (default)
 $ bzr switch -b fix-my-bug
 # hack hack hack
 $ bzr ci
 $ bzr branches
 * fix-my-bug

Oops! How do I get back to trunk?

Thanks,
jml

[Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer)]

Thanks for the bug report.

I think we should probably automatically create a lightweight checkout of a new branch named "trunk" when somebody first uses a colocated branch somewhere.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

On 21 February 2012 06:33, Jelmer Vernooij <email address hidden> wrote:
> Thanks for the bug report.
>
> I think we should probably automatically create a lightweight checkout
> of a new branch named "trunk" when somebody first uses a colocated
> branch somewhere.

I agree, except I'm not sure 'trunk' is the best name, because it has
semantics about being the trunk of the project, and that may not be
true. Perhaps it should be 'default' or 'main'?

--
Martin

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 9:40 PM, Martin Pool <email address hidden> wrote:
> On 21 February 2012 06:33, Jelmer Vernooij <email address hidden> wrote:
>> Thanks for the bug report.
>>
>> I think we should probably automatically create a lightweight checkout
>> of a new branch named "trunk" when somebody first uses a colocated
>> branch somewhere.
>
> I agree, except I'm not sure 'trunk' is the best name, because it has
> semantics about being the trunk of the project, and that may not be
> true.  Perhaps it should be 'default' or 'main'?

Well, when branching from lp:foo, it's extremely likely to be true.

You could do something where the default name of the branch is the
last segment of the parent branch's URL.

jml

[Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer)]

On 02/21/2012 12:04 PM, Jonathan Lange wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 9:40 PM, Martin Pool<email address hidden> wrote:
>> On 21 February 2012 06:33, Jelmer Vernooij<email address hidden> wrote:
>>> Thanks for the bug report.
>>>
>>> I think we should probably automatically create a lightweight checkout
>>> of a new branch named "trunk" when somebody first uses a colocated
>>> branch somewhere.
>> I agree, except I'm not sure 'trunk' is the best name, because it has
>> semantics about being the trunk of the project, and that may not be
>> true. Perhaps it should be 'default' or 'main'?
> Well, when branching from lp:foo, it's extremely likely to be true.
>
> You could do something where the default name of the branch is the
> last segment of the parent branch's URL.
>
The problem is that this isn't done until the first colocated branch is
created, so that sort of information is no longer available. Unless
perhaps we'd want to look at the parent branch, but that seems really
unobvious to me.

What about 'master' ? that would also be consistent with git.

Cheers,

Jelmer

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 11:15 AM, Jelmer Vernooij
<email address hidden> wrote:
> On 02/21/2012 12:04 PM, Jonathan Lange wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 9:40 PM, Martin Pool<email address hidden>  wrote:
>>> On 21 February 2012 06:33, Jelmer Vernooij<email address hidden>  wrote:
>>>> Thanks for the bug report.
>>>>
>>>> I think we should probably automatically create a lightweight checkout
>>>> of a new branch named "trunk" when somebody first uses a colocated
>>>> branch somewhere.
>>> I agree, except I'm not sure 'trunk' is the best name, because it has
>>> semantics about being the trunk of the project, and that may not be
>>> true.  Perhaps it should be 'default' or 'main'?
>> Well, when branching from lp:foo, it's extremely likely to be true.
>>
>> You could do something where the default name of the branch is the
>> last segment of the parent branch's URL.
>>
> The problem is that this isn't done until the first colocated branch is
> created, so that sort of information is no longer available. Unless
> perhaps we'd want to look at the parent branch, but that seems really
> unobvious to me.

Why not create the first colocated branch when the branch is initially fetched?

> What about 'master' ? that would also be consistent with git.

That'd probably work too.

jml