Interactive fork map for bazaar tree

Bug #1037851 reported by Tudor Holton
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Triaged
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

I apologise if this bug has already been reported. I have searched, but my knowledge of the terminology in this area is a bit hazy.

Currently, the visual display of code contributions is limited to branches and versions.

Frequently, multiple programmers are making separate contributions to different forks of the same project (and usually the most current version) in bazaar. Without pulling each fork's logs (and sometimes code) separately and analysing the differences, it is difficult to determine if it's worth merging that fork (to simplify merges in either direction later with a main branch).

Github solves this problem by providing a fork map that shows (among other things) when each fork was contributed to, the log summary, and links to the code changes in a visual way. It is scrollable so that it's easy to follow a fork back to see when that fork began, and at what point that fork was merged with other forks.

In a recent project, I had around a dozen programmers contributing code several times a day on one project. I found myself referring to the interactive fork map sometimes several times a day.

While many of these tasks can be performed with a combination of bzr commands and UI tools, having on the lp site allows both coders and non-coders alike to see what's being worked on and why.

For example, currently I'm trying to convince a manager that one contributor should not be pandered to because he has been hoarding contributions and hasn't actually commit for almost a year. This would be easy to prove on github, since my manager has an account and can therefore see everything that's going on on every fork, but on launchpad it is painful due to the reliance on command-line tools.

Please consider implementing an interactive fork map.

Also, if this is bug is unclear, please suggest ways to improve it.

Tudor Holton (tudor)
description: updated
description: updated
Tudor Holton (tudor)
description: updated
description: updated
description: updated
Changed in launchpad:
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Low
tags: added: bzr ui
Revision history for this message
Curtis Hovey (sinzui) wrote :

The bzr-gtk plugin provides visualisation as well as gui tools for common operations.
    cd my-branch
    bzr viz
will show the branches and merges in the history of the context branch along with the commits.

tags: added: feature
tags: added: lp-code
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