OK I lied

The next post is actually about a Bazaar plugin that I've now got ready to share. To get it, 'bzr branch lp:~jml/+junk/merged-branches'.

Once you've got it, run 'bzr merged-branches' in the trunk of your project. It will then show you all branches in sibling directories that are safe to delete.  That is,

• They have no uncommitted changes.


• They have no "unknown" files. (Files outside of version control that haven't been explicitly ignored.)


• They have no shelved changes. The plugin will only check for this if it can find bzrtools.

The branch is now at the point where it works for me, but it still belongs in '+junk' — here's why:

• It assumes that you have a trunk branch in the same directory as all of your other branches.


• It assumes that branches and working trees are the same thing.


• It's called 'merged-branches' when it really means 'safe-to-delete'.


• It doesn't make it easy to see why a branch is not safe to delete.


• It doesn't let you customize the conditions of the search. Maybe you want to see all branches with uncommitted changes.

Still, if you are like me and make a lot of branches, it's quite useful. I'll tolerate bugs, accept patches and welcome encouragement.

User Experience — When Reality Attacks

I've just got back from a hectic week in London, where members of the Bazaar community got together and thrashed out a bunch of important topics.

We talked about "user experience" and how we all want Bazaar to be a joy to use. More than one person said that we have been focusing too much on features and performance instead of user experience. The term was never really pinned down, but it's fair to say that there are things other than convenience and speed that affect how users feel while using Bazaar and that we need to work on those things, once we figure out what they are.

I think I might know the name of one of them: errors. Next post: "Notes on error".