Bazaar-NG: a distributed version control system

[Posted June 15, 2005 by cook]

Bazaar-Ng is a next-generation version control system that is in the early stages of development. The Bazaar-Ng project leader is Martin Pool.

Bazaar-NG (or bzr) is a project of Canonical to develop an open source distributed version control system that is powerful, friendly, and scalable. Version control means a system that keeps track of previous revisions of software source code or similar information and helps people work on it in teams.

Bazaar-Ng is a fork of the Bazaar project, as explained in the project FAQ. Bazaar is a re-implementation of the GNU Arch protocol. Some of the unique Bazaar-Ng features are being fed back to Bazaar as they mature.

Here is an overview of Bazaar-Ng features:

Written in the Python language, requires Python 2.4 or newer.
Works on any operating system platform that supports Python.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Is designed to work with IDEs, editors, GUIs, and other interfaces.
The user interface is similar to CVS and Subversion.
Works in both centralized and decentralized modes.
History is preserved, supports recreation of previous versions.
File and directory renaming is supported.
Optimized for remote operation, multiple downloads unchanged data is avoided.

The introductory document explains some of Bazaar's design goals in more detail.

Distributed operation is easy: you can work while disconnected; you can fork any other project; you can contribute changes back easily. The system is designed to scale to supporting very large trees with a lot of history. No operations require downloading the entire history of the project. Changes can be "cherry-picked" out of branches as needed.

The project design document details the original project goals.

The Bazaar-Ng command reference document list all of the available commands. The tutorial shows some examples of the system in use, it also mentions some of the future commands that are planned for implementation. The Bazaar-Ng project documentation has a large collection of useful information, including a comparison to a number of different version control systems.

Version 0.0.5 of Bazaar-Ng has been announced. The project is in early development, many new features are currently being added and improved.

As older version control systems such as cvs show their age, quite a few alternatives are being developed. Bazaar-Ng and Bazaar should prove to be worthy contenders for at least a part of that design space.

Bazaar-NG: a distributed version control system

Posted Jun 16, 2005 1:16 UTC (Thu) by mbcook (subscriber, #5517) [Link]

I have been using Bazaar-NG since I saw it mentioned in a Slashdot discussion a while ago (back
when the whole git/bitkeeper thing hit the fan). I'm only using it for a little project I'm developing
(software to run my website), but I have to say that the tool is very nice even through it is quite
young. I had looked at version controll in the past, but never actually used it. CVS seemed so
complicated plus I was always seeing things about how bad it was. I got as far as setting up a server
but never used it. I looked at GNU Arch, but turned that down (I was on Windows then and it didn't
support Windows, I don't know if it does now). I also didn't like the whole weird---file++
+names~~~ stuff.

But I've been using bzr and it is simple, and easy to use. Seems to work quite well. Some of the
more advanced features aren't there yet, but for my personal development stuff that no one else
ever needs to merge into, it works fantastically.

Beats my old system (full tree copies in folders organsized as root/year/month/day/*).

Bazaar-NG: a distributed version control system

Posted Jun 16, 2005 1:26 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]

> Bazaar-Ng is a fork of the Bazaar project, as explained in the project FAQ.
> Bazaar is a re-implementation of the GNU Arch protocol.

Not really. Bazaar is a fork of tla (GNU arch), Bazaar-NG is a new system that was influenced by bazaar/arch and lots of others.

Bazaar-NG: a distributed version control system

Posted Jun 16, 2005 2:56 UTC (Thu) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link] (2 responses)

Beware any project that lists two implementation details and a license as its three foremost features.

Bazaar-NG: a distributed version control system

Posted Jun 16, 2005 7:57 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]

Listing the license isn't that bad an idea given the recent BitKeeper fiasco. It tells you that (a) anyone can use it, and (b) it won't stop working all of a sudden some time down the road. Secondly, the website doesn't say anything about the ordering of the "vital facts".

Of course, you should do more than look at a feature list when picking a source code management system ...

Bazaar-NG: a distributed version control system

Posted Jun 16, 2005 15:21 UTC (Thu) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

Beware any project that lists two implementation details and a license as its three foremost features.

I will a fourth detail then: the project lead is the same Martin Pool who is responsible for distcc.

Regards, Daniel

Bazaar-NG: a distributed version control system

Posted Jun 16, 2005 14:53 UTC (Thu) by shahms (subscriber, #8877) [Link]

In related news, Robert Collins (Bazaar not NG lead) recently introduced "bzr style inventory" into his development branch of bazaar. The gradual merging of baz and bzr continues :-)

no thanks

Posted Jun 16, 2005 17:43 UTC (Thu) by airman (subscriber, #7341) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, too late, guys !

Now I had a taste of git/cogito, I'll certainly not get back to something else. Not for my toy projects, and certainly not for my company's sources...

no thanks

Posted Jun 16, 2005 19:23 UTC (Thu) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link]

What are some technical advantages of git/cogito over bzr, other than performance optimations for some specific use cases?

Larry