revspecs in recipes should be part of the URL

On Fri Nov 13 06:18:45 UTC 2009 Andrew Bennetts wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> The current format has an optional revspec on the end of a line. It
> would be nicer if it were part of the URL, so that we can cleanly have
> other optional fields there instead.
>
> Specifically,
> - the branch URL could have ;revno=1234 or similar as a suffix, and
> - this makes space for a featture Robert and I are working on (merging part
> of a tree from another branch).

I would be happy to do this, and I think it was originally discussed as
a possibility. However, it would be great (and perhaps a blocker on doing
this) if bzr understood the URIs, not just bzr-builder.

What I mean is, if we pick ...;revno=1234 then

  bzr branch ....;revno=1234

should do the right thing.

Thanks,

James

I agree with the intent of this bug.

Adding a bzr task so that we can get the functionality in to bzr.

Thanks,

James

@james what functionality do you need in bzr?

On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 02:07:09 -0000, Robert Collins <email address hidden> wrote:
> @james what functionality do you need in bzr?

Basically being able to

  bzr branch <URI from recipe>

so that you don't have to do a transformation from what you know works
for recipes and what you know works from bzr.

I'd also prefer not to have the code to interpret the URI to branch +
revid in bzr-builder so that it can grow more easily to accommodate
other needs.

Thanks,

James

On Wed, 2010-04-07 at 09:22 +0000, James Westby wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 02:07:09 -0000, Robert Collins <email address hidden> wrote:
> > @james what functionality do you need in bzr?
>
> Basically being able to
>
> bzr branch <URI from recipe>
>
> so that you don't have to do a transformation from what you know works
> for recipes and what you know works from bzr.
>
> I'd also prefer not to have the code to interpret the URI to branch +
> revid in bzr-builder so that it can grow more easily to accommodate
> other needs.

Hmm. But bzr-builder doesn't use the command line interface to bzr
anyway; and this is arguably a UI glue issue; so I don't actually agree
bzr needs or should change to permit this.

-Rob

On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 09:42:33 -0000, Robert Collins <email address hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-04-07 at 09:22 +0000, James Westby wrote:
> > On Wed, 07 Apr 2010 02:07:09 -0000, Robert Collins <email address hidden> wrote:
> > > @james what functionality do you need in bzr?
> >
> > Basically being able to
> >
> > bzr branch <URI from recipe>
> >
> > so that you don't have to do a transformation from what you know works
> > for recipes and what you know works from bzr.
> >
> > I'd also prefer not to have the code to interpret the URI to branch +
> > revid in bzr-builder so that it can grow more easily to accommodate
> > other needs.
>
> Hmm. But bzr-builder doesn't use the command line interface to bzr
> anyway;

Correct

> and this is arguably a UI glue issue;

I don't understand this point.

> so I don't actually agree
> bzr needs or should change to permit this.

I don't think it needs to, I think it should. I think we should avoid an
inconsistent interface here.

Thanks,

James

You can already specify a url as part of a revspec, e.g. "bzr branch -r 10:lp:bzrtools bzr.dev bzt" branches from bzrtools, not bzr.dev. Couldn't you use that syntax in bzr-builder?

And wouldn't it be infinite recursion if revspecs could contain urls which could contain revspecs, which...

On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:34:53 -0000, Aaron Bentley <email address hidden> wrote:
> You can already specify a url as part of a revspec, e.g. "bzr branch -r
> 10:lp:bzrtools bzr.dev bzt" branches from bzrtools, not bzr.dev.
> Couldn't you use that syntax in bzr-builder?

Kind of ugly, but yes, it would be possible in theory. Parsing
10:lp:bzrtools and distinguishing fromm lp:bzrtools wouldn't be easy,
but I imagine it's easy to distinguish using bzr.

> And wouldn't it be infinite recursion if revspecs could contain urls
> which could contain revspecs, which...

Yes, but it would require someone to write an infinitely long string to
cause bzr-builder to loop forever. You can't refer to an outer part from
an inner part as far as I know, so I don't think there's any potential
for abuse.

Thanks,

James

On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 08:23:19 +0100, James Westby <email address hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:34:53 -0000, Aaron Bentley <email address hidden> wrote:
> > You can already specify a url as part of a revspec, e.g. "bzr branch -r
> > 10:lp:bzrtools bzr.dev bzt" branches from bzrtools, not bzr.dev.
> > Couldn't you use that syntax in bzr-builder?
>
> Kind of ugly, but yes, it would be possible in theory. Parsing
> 10:lp:bzrtools and distinguishing fromm lp:bzrtools wouldn't be easy,
> but I imagine it's easy to distinguish using bzr.

Plus it doesn't fit my desire to be able to copy the URL from a recipe
and prepend "bzr branch" to it to get that branch and tree that the
recipe will use.

Thanks,

James

There have been some discussions about syntax for this, including <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-distributed-devel/2009-December/000133.html>. I think this is now ready to implement?

bumping the target, since this isn't in 2.2

This is related to some of the colocated branch work that has been happening.