Making the tarball with bzr data (was: bzr repository ready?)

[Óscar Fuentes]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

> But the hard part is to integrate those 3 starting points with the
> "wget+untar" approach.

There is a very simple & safe method for creating a tarball that just
requires untarring at the other end.

First, create a bound branch of `trunk' on a shared repository [1]:

bzr init-repo emacs-repo
bzr checkout http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/emacs/trunk

Now, the process of creating the tarball is:

cd emacs-repo/trunk
bzr update
cd ../..
tar the emacs-repo directory

The user just needs to download and untar to get a shared repository
containing `trunk' with read-only access to the GNU repository. A `bzr
update' is enough to get the latest changes and thus have a mirror of
the branch on the GNU repository.

If the user is an emacs hacker with write access rights, he does:

cd emacs-repo/trunk
bzr unbind
bzr bind sftp://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/r/emacs/trunk

And he is ready to start committing. [2]

If the user needs access to other branches, obtaining them with bazaar
just requires a few minutes, as only those revisions which are not
common with `trunk' will be downloaded.

If the user prefers other workflows, he has everything he needs, as he
can create branches from the mirror bound branch or unbind the mirror
branch, so this method is not restricted to the "bound work branch"
workflow.

Notes:

1. the `bzr init-repo emacs-repo' may require extra options for creating
a shared repository with the most efficient format on bazaar versions
previous to 2.0

2. something that hackers should do before the first commit is to
identify themselves with the `bzr whoami' command:

bzr whoami "Joe Hacker <address@hidden>"

-- 
Óscar