Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Lithe Branching

[John Meinel]

address@hidden wrote:
> I have branches stable for merging, dev1 for developer A
> and dev2 belonging to developer B.
>
> I can easily 'tla get $stable' to run alternate test star-merges
> of dev1 and dev2, or both combined.
>
> But can I easily create an archive of stable+dev1, to then
> star-merge in dev2, so I can easily test if it is worth
> doing just such a star merge at this point, in that sequence,
> or discover it is perhaps better to firstly commit dev2 first,
> then star-merge in dev1 (possibly so dev1 can make further
> changes)?

Well, are you just testing if the merge works? Why do you need a branch 
for that. Just:

tla get $stable test-stable
cd test-stable
tla star-merge $dev1
#make sure everything is okay
tla star-merge $dev2
# See if everything is okay.
# This gets a little tricky, but it might be what you want
# It creates a branch, and then changes you working directory
# to that branch. In aba it is just "aba branch-this"
tla tag -S $stable cat--stable-withdev
tla sync-tree cat--stable-withdev--base-0
tla set-tree-version cat--stable-withdev--base-0

# Now the merge of both branches is on a branch. You could have
# Committed to the main branch if you wanted.
tla commit

> I am now comfortable with tla get to provide ready access to
> working trees, but am not sure about readily throwing around
> temporary trees at a higher level (with commits and all), in
> order to test in that different way. So is it possible/ easy?
>
> My experience with Bitkeeper was that such things are _really_
> simple - "bk clone src(dir/archive) dst(dir/archive)", which
> is essentially just cp -r src dst, since history is within
> the working tree.
>
> This Bitkeeper approach is what I am terming "lithe branching"
> for the purposes of this email, and is a concept that I think
> would be well worth making clear how to do - I believe it's a
> powerful tool for developers to get to know.

If you truly want to do things on a test branch, you could just do:

tla tag -S $stable $stable-test
tla get $stable-test stable-test
cd stable-test
tla star-merge --reference $stable $dev1
# Play play
tla commit
tla star-merge --reference $stable $dev2
# Play
tla commit.

Note that the tla tag -S doesn't create any data in the repository. It 
just creates a new branch name, which is a CONTINUATION of the previous 
branch. So it is a cheap operations. The "commit"s will only commit new 
changes, so again, pretty cheap.

> Thanks in advance
> Zenaan

I suppose you could also do all of this with a throwaway archive, but I 
wouldn't recommend it.

John
=:->

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature