Re: patch vs. overwrite in bzr

[Óscar Fuentes]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> > FWIW, I like having separate branches.  At least for Emacs, and for
>> > the use case when the changes in the branch are significant (like what
>> > I had for bidi), co-located branches get in the way because switching
>> > branches needs to make a lot of changes, and requires a large build if
>> > not a full bootstrap.
>> 
>> Use out-of-source builds, with a build directory per branch...
>
> What for?  I have no problems with the above arrangement.  Joakim
> asked how others arrange their branches, and I described mine.  There
> are no problems I have that would require me to change it.

You mentioned some problems with colocated branches, and I described a
method for avoiding them. I'm not trying to convince you to change
anything.

>> unless that collides with Emacs' peculiar practice of putting build
>> products on the source tree for out-of-source builds.
>
> Nothing peculiar here: the Windows build simply doesn't support
> out-of-source builds.  But I build inside the source tree on GNU/Linux
> as well, so that's not the main reason.

The GNU/Linux build also puts products on the source tree (the .elc
files).

>> On addition, when I switch branches from Emacs the relevant function is
>> advised for storing timestamps of the files of the current branch before
>> the switch and recover the timestamps of the new branch's files after
>> the switch, so no rebuild is triggered because some source file was
>> modified by the switch when the new branch already has an associated up
>> to date build.
>
> IMO, this is a dangerous practice, because you cannot always
> second-guess what needs to be rebuilt after the switch, what with all
> the complex Makefile rules.

There is nothing dangerous about that, because you don't need to
second-guess.

> In any case, if you have branches in separate directories, you get
> that for free.

This is for people who prefer to use colocated branches.

>> vc-git solves this by displaying the current branch name on the
>> modeline. vc-bzr could do the same if colocated branches gain
>> popularity.
>
> You are assuming that I use VC to do my bzr operations.  That's false.

What you use for "bzr operations" have nothing to do with the
information displayed on the modeline, which helps hackers who use
colocated branches to know all the time which branch they are working
on.