launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Barry Warsaw <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm trying to opportunistically fix a bug in launchpadlib.  It takes  
me no more than 5 minutes to fix and test the code, so why does it  
take me so much longer to actually publish the fix?

1. Filing a bug.  I want to file a bug so that I can attach my branch  
to it.  It would be awesome if I could just do something like:

    % bzr push lp:~barry/launchpadlib/fix-thing --report-bug

and get prompted for the bug report details, which I can fill out in  
my browser.  bzr would automatically file the bug for me and set the -- 
fixes on the branch so that the linkage happens automatically.  It  
doesn't even have to be perfect, just a subject and description is  
enough, with extra points for opening my browser to the new bug's url.

2. "different rich-roots" nightmare

So I do the most obvious thing possible:

% bzr init-repo launchpadlib
% cd launchpadlib
% bzr branch lp:launchpadlib
% bzr branch launchpadlib fix-thing
% cd fix-thing
% <hack> <hack> <hack>
% bzr commit
% bzr push lp:~barry/launchpadlib/fix-thing
<some ugly output, then...>
different rich-root-support
and BOOM!

The problem is caused by the first step, where I inadvertently created  
a --2a repo, and by the third step where an apparently incompatible  
format branch was transparently upgraded.  By the time I try to  
publish my branch, I've already been screwed but I don't know it.  Of  
course by now I've spent all the time I could spare just getting the  
code working and now I'm dead in the water with no way out.  A normal  
person will have no idea how to repair the problem and will likely  
just abandon this nice helpful fix they've got.  Everyone loses.

I know I've complained about this before, but I fear that if we do not  
address this problem, we're going to piss off a lot of developers, and  
worse simply (and probably silently) lose lots of good contributions  
to the open source ecosystem.

Is there anything on the horizon to fix this issue?  I'm happy to file  
bugs if it will help.

-Barry

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