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BzrPrimer

Bazaar primer for SVN developers

This is a shortened workflow, explaining the steps from having developed on sf.net and knowing SVN to developing on launchpad.net using bazaar (bzr).

Getting started with bazaar

Getting started with Launchpad

Getting started with widelands development

This is for unixes. The Windows terminal should work quite similarly, but optionally you can use some kind of GUI, like http://wiki.bazaar.canonical.com/TortoiseBzr.

Initial Steps

  • First install bazaar on your computer. That is the utility used to move files back and forth from Launchpad.

  • Start a terminal session on your computer and from the home directory set your identification (in case you are using bzr for the first time on this machine). Normally, you should use this (don't use it, read below):

~$ bzr whoami "Your Name \<your.email@example.net\>"

But the above will unashamedly expose your email address, so don't provide it, and ignore the warnings:

~$ bzr whoami "username"

If you have not done it, you may also need to register your public key through Launchpad's web interface.

  • Then set up a bzr shared-repository folder on your computer by entering:

    ~$ bzr init-repo widelands-repo

  • Now you have ~/widelands-repo empty directory created. If you will be developing media, also set up a repository for the media branch by entering:

    ~$ bzr init-repo widelands-media-repo

  • These repositories will contain trunk and your own branches used to upload and download your changes.

_Side note: '~$' here means home directory, on Linux it tends to be like 'home/johny/'. If unsure where you are, use 'pwd' or just 'cd' to get back to home directory. _

Getting the Source

  • To download a "checkout" which is the contents of the main development trunk for the first time, go to widelands-repo directory:

$ cd ~/widelands-repo

  • and run:

$ bzr branch lp:widelands/trunk

  • When that completes, you will have ~/widelands-repo/trunk/ populated with widelands source code.

  • Remember: DO NOT MAKE CHANGES DIRECTLY TO THE TRUNK. (BAD things happen.) ;(

  • Likewise, to download a "checkout" of the media trunk for the first time, go to ~/widelands-media-repo and run:

~$ bzr branch lp:widelands-media/trunk

  • This is a BIG download (more than 4 GB)

Getting your changes into the game

Branches

The strong point of distributed version control systems is the freedom to create branches for every single feature to add or bug to be fixed. While developing, this code will not break mainstream source, and anyone can download a specific branch and test it to confirm if it works as expected. Finally, when the branch has successfully added the feature or fixed the bug, it will be merged with the main trunk and the branch can be deleted safely. Another strong point of working only on branches is the lower risk of conflicts when merging. My recommendation is only work on branches, and use a local main branch to pull from upstream and rebase your branches before pushing them back. DO NOT MAKE CHANGES DIRECTLY TO THE TRUNK. (BAD things happen.) ;( (Have we made our point?) face-wink.png

Creating own branch (to add a new feature / fix a bug / change anything)

  • First change to widelands-repo directory:

$ cd ~/widelands-repo/

  • and create new branch from the trunk (named feature-xxx)

$ bzr branch trunk feature-xxx

  • Directory ~/widelands-repo/feature-xxx/ should now be populated with widelands source code.

  • Any of your changes should be done in feature-xxx directory only!

  • If you need to add a new file, you must inform bzr of its existence, so use:

$ bzr add *

  • Once you are done, you must commit changes (creating new revision) with:

$ bzr commit -m "Feature added: xxx"

  • (Before any commit, it's a good habit to bzr status, to make sure of what will really change, e.g. to not forget of bzr add any new files.)

  • We now push changes to our own personal repo on launchpad:

$ bzr push lp:~my.user.name/widelands/my-feature-xxx

  • Or we may push to the official development repo:

$ bzr push lp:~widelands-dev/widelands/my-feature-xxx

  • Now we can send an email to inform other devs and players that branch my-feature-xxx needs testing.

To keep your working tree(s) up to date

with changes others have made on the trunk (or an original personal branch from someone else), you must pull the changes from launchpad and then merge them with your working tree. For the main development trunk, this is done as follows (the media trunk and personal branches are handled in a similar fashion):

  • $ cd widelands-repo/trunk
  • $ bzr pull
  • $ cd ../my_widelands_working_tree
  • $ bzr merge ../trunk
  • $ bzr commit -m "Merged trunk."

Note that any changes you have made to your working tree but have not committed will be lost. So if you wish to keep the work you have done so far in your working tree, do a bzr commit (see above) to firstly secure them before merging the new changes from the trunk.

Merging with the main trunk

We have already seen example commands to push our changes to personal branches on launchpad. The typical path for introducing fixes or new features is to firstly have those changes pushed to a personal branch and then, when we feel that branch is ready, submit a proposal for merging on Launchpad. The branch will be flagged as requesting review and merging upon acceptance.

Experienced members of the development team have the ability to merge development branches directly into the main trunk. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!!

When bugs get fully fixed or features added really work without problems, then you can propose a merge with main through launchpad web. Or rebase your bug-xxx branch with the main trunk, merge bug-xxx with main and do a push on main. Note: If you do it this way you need the rebase plugin for bazaar.

  • $ cd ~/widelands-repo/bug-xxx
  • $ bzr rebase ~/widelands

Now we merge our local branch with our local mainstream.

  • $ cd ~/widelands-
  • $ bzr merge bug-xxx
  • Solve conflicts with merges

Some test are needed, at least try to build! When you were sure that all is ok, you can upload to mainstream. Note: After a merge, a commit is always needed.

  • $ bzr commit -m "Merged with bug-xxx"
  • $ bzr push

Doing that way, another developer can push a change before you push yours. In that case a conflict could arise when trying to push ('branches have diverged' or something like that). When that happens, you simply uncommit your merges to main:

  • $ cd ~/widelands
  • $ bzr uncommit

Revert to undo merge:

  • $ bzr revert

Update your local main trunk (see above) and redo the rebase, merge, commit and push again.

Alternative method

Assuming bug-xxx was originally a branch of the main trunk, an alternative to the rebase is to:

  • $ cd ~/widelands-repo/trunk
  • $ bzr pull (to get any recent changes to the main trunk)
  • $ cd ../bug-xxx
  • $ bzr merge ../trunk
  • $ bzr commit -m "Merged with changes from main trunk"
  • $ cd ../trunk
  • $ bzr merge ../bug-xxx
  • $ bzr commit -m "Bug xxx fixed"
  • $ bzr push lp:widelands/trunk

Doing it manually can be a bit 'time consuming' if a lot of developers push at the same time, so I think that is better to make a petition to merge and solve all on launchpad web.

Getting a specific revision

In your bzr checkout (i.e. your local copy of a trunk or branch) run:

  • $ bzr revert -r <revisionnumber>

then you are down to that revision number

to get back to HEAD, run:

  • $ bzr revert
  • $ bzr pull

Git-style workspace (lightweight checkouts)

Another way to organize the workspace (and at the same time save some space on your hard disk) is to use the so-called "lightweight checkouts".

Normally, the shared repository (widelands-repo) contains the history of the "common part" of all branches. A single branch (trunk, feature-xxx, bug-xxx) contains the history of that branch and the current version of all files that are in the branch.

So, if you have 3 branches, you will have 3 times all the unmodified files.

A "lightweight checkout" is simply a "link" to a specific revision of a branch, and gives you the possibility to keep a single working directory and to attach this working directory to any branch. Since you have only one working directory, you have all files only one time. In this way it's very similar to git style - a single "moving" workspace (that follows a single branch at a time).

In order to use this system, you can generate the branch with the --no-tree option. This means that the history (and support files) for that branch will be generated, but no actual file belonging to the branch itself will be inserted in the branch folder.

  • $ cd ~/widelands-repo/
  • $ bzr branch --no-tree trunk feature-xxx

Then you have to create the "working directory" folder and link it to your branch:

  • $ bzr checkout --lightweight feature-xxx my_widelands_working_tree
  • $ cd my_widelands_working_tree

From now on, every time you commit in the "my_widelands_working_tree" folder, you are committing to feature-xxx.

Imagine that you want to create another branch and start working on it. Here is one way to do it (but see below for a possible shortcut):

  • $ cd ~/widelands-repo/
  • $ bzr branch --no-tree trunk feature-yyy

Now we have to "move" our "working directory", so as it points to the branch we want to work in:

  • $ cd my_widelands_working_tree
  • $ bzr switch ../feature-yyy

Now any changed made on my_widelands_working_tree is applied to feature-yyy.

NOTE: if you plan to use this approach, you have to type "--no-tree" any time you create a branch. To avoid this, the initial init-repo command can be modified into:

*$ cd ~ * $ bzr init-repo --no-trees widelands-repo

so that any branch created will be created without trees. Then you can use the switch command to create new branches more easily. Suppose that you want to create a branch which starts with the current status of your working directory. You can simply say:

  • $ bzr switch -b ../feature-yyy

to simultaneous create and switch to the new branch.

Graphical user interfaces for BZR

Among the BZR Plugins, there are some nice graphical user interfaces for bzr that can ease the work with bzr (e.g. through showing a commit window where you can select what you would like to submit, write the commit message, and add the number for a fixed bug to the commit).

Available for Linux, Windows and the MAC OS, qbzr is a simple and intuitive user interface. Just install qbzr for your repository, and afterwards write the same commands in the terminal as before, just with a "q" at the beginning (e.g. "bzr qdiff", "bzr qcommit", ...)

Now, speak up on the mailinglist widelands-public and we might merge your branch into trunk if it is good.