Comment 13 for bug 609186

On Tue, 2010-09-28 at 21:16 +0000, James Westby wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:49:18 -0000, Barry Warsaw <email address hidden> wrote:
> > re: another command. we could certainly do that; it would allow us to
> > do apt-get source when there's a problem with the source branch. but
> > otoh, there shouldn't be problems with the source branches, right?
> > <wink> i do like being able to just 'bzr branch' like normal.
> That's what we discussed in Prague.
A directory service also seems the most natural to me. There are quite a
few commands that support directory services and being able to do e.g.
"bzr missing -v ubuntu:tdb" is quite neat.

> > re: debianlp: maybe we should just support ubuntu:squeeze/foo and
> > ubuntu:lenny/foo. we do get into a tricky area here with shortcuts in
> > the distroseries position though. for now i'm only supporting the
> > distroseries that launchpad support (though hardcoded in the plugin
> > rather than consulting lp). i think we can avoid name collisions,
> > because "ubuntu:squeeze" would have to be the squeeze package's source
> > branch in the default distroseries, while "ubuntu:squeeze/squeeze" would
> > be the same package in debian squeeze. we're probably safe until ubuntu
> > 13.10's squishy squeeze ;)
>
> > so how about this:
> >
> > * move the directory services to lp plugin
> > * support ubuntu:<distroseries>/<package> where 'distroseries' can be
> > any ubuntu or debian series
> Seems a little hedgemonic to me.
It seems strange to me that debian distroseries would live in the
"ubuntu:" namespace. If we e.g. end up also importing mepis or gnewsense
into Launchpad this may become problematic (and even more confusing).

> > * support ubuntu:<package> for default distroseries (yeah, but for ubuntu or debian? i say the former, and be explicit about the
> > distroseries if you want debian
> > * u: is an acceptable alias for ubuntu:
> > * rename deb: to apt:
> >
> > this would still let me 'bzr branch u:gtimelog' which is about as short
> > as it gets. how's that sound?
>
> I like the push to make this easier for people to deal with, but I'm not
> sure a quest for the fewest characters is necessarily the right way.
>
> I think Jelmer's concerns are well founded, but I'm not sure how best to
> reconcile then with our desires at this point.
We all seem to agree that supporting "ubuntu:" for Ubuntu packages and
renaming "deb:" to "apt:" is a good idea. Fetching Ubuntu packages seems
like the most common use case for udd anyway. I don't want to dismiss
the other bits of your branch but perhaps we can get those in first then
consider the other things?

I personally prefer "ubuntu:" over "u:" as well, because it is clearer
and not that much longer. Somebody reading over my shoulder or reading a
blog post will probably be able to guess what "bzr log ubuntu:samba"
does. There obviously is a tradeoff there between readability and
command length there. I'm glad we don't have "bzr log -r a:../bla" as an
alias of "bzr log -r ancestor:../bla", but that we do have -r as an
alias of --revision.

Cheers,

Jelmer