Bzr: Create a shared repository from an existing stand-alone repository

Question

I have been using Bzr for version control of my project over the last few months. I am the sole developer, and currently I just have everything in a single local project directory, to which I commit and which I sync to DriveHQ.

I now have some large-scale experiments in mind which would likely break this main line, so I've been looking into the concepts of branches and shared repositories. So my question is, basically: how should I go about creating a new, shared repository from this already-version-controlled base?

I am familiar with the SVN project structure of trunk, branches and tags, and I'm going to adopt this structure. My plan is to just go ahead and do a fresh init-repo, and copy all my code (plus .bzr) over into the trunk folder. So is this OK? Or is there some way to convert what I have already into a shared repository?

Many thanks in advance for any help.

Christopher

Kevin

Answer 1

OK, so you have some work directory where your standalone branch is. You want to create trunk and feature branches in new shared repo.

At first you need to create a shared repository itself:

bzr init-repo /path/to/repo

Now you can put your code to repo/trunk. You can use push, branch or you can copy work and use reconfigure.

1. cd work; bzr push /path/to/repo/trunk
2. cd path/to/repo; bzr branch /path/to/work trunk
3. or copy/move work to /path/to/repo/trunk then cd /path/to/repo/trunk; bzr reconfigure --use-shared

In all cases you'll have branch trunk as a copy of your old work, and this trunk will use shared repository to save the revisions.

You can also look at bzr-colo plugin.

Dystrophy

For me, I used #1 and it also worked perfectly (I think). I had same situation and used #1. To confirm, I cd /path/to/repo, where I type bzr info and get Shared repository with trees (format: 2a) (newline) Location: (newline) shared repository: . . And then I type bzr info trunk which gives Repository tree (format: 2a) (newline) Location: (newline) shared repository: . (newline) repository branch: trunk . Thanks @bialix! – Stokeontrent

Answer 2

1. Create a folder outside your current repository.
2. Call bzr init-repo to create a shared repository
3. From your working tree push to the newly created shared repo.

You can now work directly on the shared repo

Romanaromanas

I wanted to suggest tha same but instead of push , do branch from the old rep to the new one. is there a difference? – Propositus

@Gil: you can branch in the new shared repo from the old working copy, it works also. – Romanaromanas

@TridenT: Many thanks, very helpful. Just to clarify, can I then safely delete the old repository? And should I do that from Bzr, or can I just drag it to the trash? – Kevin

@Kevin Yes, once it is pushed, you can delete the old one. – Romanaromanas