[Monotone-devel] Initially creating a branch without committing changes?

[Ralf S. Engelschall]

Suppose I've imported (via Tailor) a CVS repository's module trunk into
a Monotone repository and there onto branch "foo.bar.cvs". I then would
like to have "foo.bar" the main development branch for the project
and hence I want to initially create this "foo.bar" branch by just
propagating the head revision of "foo.bar.cvs" into "foo.bar" -- BUT
WITHOUT BEING REQUIRED TO MAKE ANY CHANGES BEFOREHAND.

I just want that the initial revision on "foo.bar" is _IDENTICAL_ to
the last revision (on the then effectively dead as long as one doesn't
import more from CVS) "foo.bar.cvs" branch.

It is clear to me that with...

  $ mtn --db=/path/to/mtn.db co -b foo.bar.cvs src
  $ cd src
  $ [MAKE SOME CHANGES]
  $ mtn ci -b foo.bar -m "create foo.bar branch"

...I can easily create the "foo.bar" branch. But this requires me to
make some changes beforehand. Hmmm... I would have expected that I can
do:

  $ mtn --db=/path/to/mtn.db propagate foo.bar.cvs foo.bar

But this is denied because the "foo.bar" branch is still empty (or not
existing). And there is also not something like a "--force" option to
"mtn ci" or "mtn propagate" to let me DWIM.

I assume the problem is that all this boils down to the issue of an
"empty changeset" which seems to be something which (by design?) might
to be not supported in Monotone, right?

The only possibility I've found is to manually issue an additional cert
for the new branch via:

  $ mtn cert h:foo.bar.cvs branch foo.bar

This worked just fine. But I'm not sure whether whether this really is
the correct approach.

So, the main question for me is: what is best/correct approach to start
a branch "foo.bar" and have its initial revision _identical_ to the
latest revision on "foo.bar.cvs"?

                                       Ralf S. Engelschall
                                       address@hidden
                                       www.engelschall.com