~bzr-pqm/bzr/bzr.dev

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What's New in Bazaar 2.2?

*************************

Bazaar 2.2.0, released on the 6th of August 2010, marks the start of

another long-term-stable series. From here, we will only make bugfix

releases on the 2.2 series (2.2.1, etc), while 2.3 will become our new

development series. The 2.0 and 2.1 series will also continue to get

bugfixes. (Currently 2.0 is planned to be supported for another 6 months.)

The main changes in 2.2 are: **better local and network performance**,

**reduced memory usage**, and several user-interface improvements.

Users are encouraged to upgrade from the other stable series.  This

document outlines the improvements in Bazaar 2.2 vs Bazaar 2.1. As well as

summarizing improvements made to the core product, it highlights

enhancements within the broader Bazaar world of potential interest to

those upgrading.

Bazaar 2.2.0 includes all the fixes from 2.1.2 and 2.0.6.

Over 120 bugs have been fixed in total.  See the

:doc:`../release-notes/index` for a full list.

Bazaar 2.2.1 includes all the fixes from 2.1.3 and 2.0.6 (that

weren't included in 2.2.0).

See the :doc:`../release-notes/index` for details.

Bazaar 2.2 is fully compatible both locally and on the network with 2.0

and 2.1, and can read and write repositories generated by all previous

versions.

Behaviour changes

*****************

There are some compatibility changes in this release.  

* For commandline users we no longer guess user identity for ``bzr

  commit``: users must specify their identity using ``bzr whoami`` (you

  don't need to specify your identity for readonly operations).

  This avoids problems where the previous guessed default caused commits

  be recorded as coming from, for example ``<sam@localhost>``.

Improved conflict handling

**************************

Tree-shape conflicts can be resolved by providing ``--take-this`` and

``--take-other`` to the ``bzr resolve`` command. Just marking the conflict

as resolved is still accessible via the ``--done`` default action.

Local performance

*****************

* ``bzr init`` does not recursively scan directory contents anymore

  leading to faster init for directories with existing content.

  (Martin [gz], Parth Malwankar, #501307)

* Less code is loaded at startup, so there's less overhead on running all

  bzr commands.

  (Andrew Bennetts, Martin Pool)

* Reduce peak memory by one copy of compressed text.

  (John Arbash Meinel, #566940)

* Avoid repeated locking of local objects in ``diff``, ``missing``, and

  ``pull``, so those options are faster.

  (Andrew Bennetts)

Network performance

*******************

* Bazaar now reads data from SSH connections more efficiently on platforms

  that provide the ``socketpair`` function, and when using paramiko.

  (Andrew Bennetts, #590637)

* Index lookups in pack repositories search recently hit pack files

  first.  In repositories with many pack files this can greatly reduce the

  number of files accessed, the number of bytes read, and the number of

  read calls.  An incremental pull via plain HTTP takes half the time and

  bytes for a moderately large repository.  (Andrew Bennetts)

* Index lookups only re-order the indexes when the hit files aren't

  already first. Reduces the cost of reordering

  (John Arbash Meinel, #562429)

Command improvements

********************

* Added ``bzr remove-branch`` command that can remove a local or remote 

  branch. (Jelmer Vernooij, #276295)

* ``bzr export`` now takes an optional argument ``--per-file-timestamps``

  to set file mtimes to the last timestamp of the last revision in which

  they were changed rather than the current time. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Tag names can now be determined automatically by ``automatic_tag_name`` 

  hooks on ``Branch`` if they are not specified on the command line.

  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Tree-shape conflicts can be resolved by providing ``--take-this`` and

  ``--take-other`` to the ``bzr resolve`` command. Just marking the conflict

  as resolved is still accessible via the ``--done`` default action.

  (Vincent Ladeuil)

* The ``--directory`` option is supported for a number of additional

  commands: added, annotate, bind, cat, cat-revision, clean-tree,

  conflicts, deleted, export, ignore, ignored, lookup-revision, ls,

  merge-directive, missing, modified, nick, re-sign, resolve, shelve,

  switch, unbind, unknowns, unshelve, whoami.  

  (Martin von Gagern, #527878)

* ``bzr commit`` accepts ``-p`` (for "patch") as a shorter name for

  ``--show-diff``.

  (Parth Malwankar, #571467)

* ``bzr ignore`` now supports a ``--default-rules`` option that displays

  the default ignore rules used by bzr. The flag ``--old-default-rules``

  is no longer supported by ``ignore``.

  (Parth Malwankar, #538703)

* ``bzr pack`` now supports a ``--clean-obsolete-packs`` option that

  can save disk space by deleting obsolete pack files created during the

  pack operation.

  (Parth Malwankar, #304320)

* New command line option ``--authors`` to ``bzr log`` allows users to

  select which of the apparent authors and committer should be

  included in the log. Defaults depend on format. (Martin von Gagern, #513322)

* The bash_completion plugin from the bzr-bash-completion project has

  been merged into the tree. It provides a bash-completion command and

  replaces the outdated ``contrib/bash/bzr`` script with a version

  using the plugin. (Martin von Gagern, #560030)

* A new transport based on GIO (the gnome i/o library) provides access to

  samba shares, webdav using gio+smb and gio+dav. It is also possible to

  use gio for some already existing transport methods as gio+file,

  gio+sftp, gio+ftp. 

  (Mattias Eriksson)

Controlling plugins

*******************

* Plugins can be disabled by defining ``BZR_DISABLE_PLUGINS`` as

  a list of plugin names separated by ':' (';' on windows).

  (Vincent Ladeuil, #411413)

* Plugins can be loaded from arbitrary locations by defining

  ``BZR_PLUGINS_AT`` as a list of ``name@path`` separated by ':' (';' on

  Microsoft

  Windows). This takes precedence over ``BZR_PLUGIN_PATH`` for the

  specified plugins, and is expected to be most useful for plugin

  developers.

  (Vincent Ladeuil, #82693)

Apport crash reporting

**********************

* If the Apport crash-reporting tool is available, bzr crashes are now

  stored into the ``/var/crash`` apport spool directory, and the user is

  invited to report them to the developers from there, either

  automatically or by running ``apport-bug``.  No information is sent

  without specific permission from the user.  (Martin Pool, #515052)

Improved Launchpad integration

******************************

* Merges can be proposed on Launchpad with the new ``lp-propose-merge``

  command.

Better documentation

********************

* ``bzr help patterns`` now explains case insensitive patterns and

  points to Python regular expression documentation.

  (Parth Malwankar, #594386)

* Numerous improvements have been made to the developer documentation.

Changes to plugins

******************

bzr grep

========

The `grep plugin <https://launchpad.net/bzr-grep>`_  has developed well

during the bzr 2.2 cycle.  bzr grep can search the versioned files in the

working tree, or in one or a series of revisions, or it can search through

only the changes in a revision range.

qbzr

====

`qbzr <https://launchpad.net/qbzr>`_, a cross-platform graphical interface

to Bazaar, gained many features and fixes in its 0.19 release, including:

* qannotate has new look and feel; with new features: find text and goto

  to line.

* Improved performance of qlog, and treewidget-based dialogs (qcommit,

  qadd, qrevert etc.)

* qpush, qmerge, etc.: when there are uncommitted changes in the working

  tree, user has the option to commit, or revert.

* qcommit: user can update bound branch/checkout if it is not up to date.

* Better support of Mac OS X: dialog windows no more start in background.

* qlog: Context menu actions for tag and revert will now show a branch

  menu if more than one branch is open.

* qlog: more context menu actions for update, cherry-pick, and reverse

  cherry-pick.

* Language of GUI can be set in DEFAULT section of bazaar.conf 

  as ``language = code``. Language codes are the same 

  as for ``LANG`` environment variable. 

  Environment variable ``LANGUAGE`` still preferred over settings 

  in bazaar.conf.

Platform-specific changes

*************************

Microsoft Windows

=================

* There's a new py2exe windows program ``bzrw.exe``, which allows for starting a Bazaar GUI with out have a console open in the background.  (Gary van der Merwe, #433781`) 

* The all-in-one Windows installer will now be built with docstrings stripped

  from the library zip, reducing the size and slightly improving cold startup

  time. Bundled plugins are unchanged for the moment, but if adding other new

  plugins to an all-in-one installation, ensure they are compiled and

  installed with -O1 or help may not work. (Martin [gz])

* Parsing of command lines, for example in ``diff --using``, no longer

  treats backslash as an escape character on Windows.   (Gordon Tyler,

  #392248)

API changes

***********

* BzrError subclasses no longer support the name "message" to be used

  as an argument for __init__ or in _fmt format specification as this

  breaks in some Python versions. errors.LockError.__init__ argument

  is now named "msg" instead of earlier "message".

  (Parth Malwankar, #603461)

* The old ``bzr selftest --benchmark`` option has been removed.

  <https://launchpad.net/bzr-usertest> is an actively-maintained

  macrobenchmark suite.

  (Martin Pool)

* bzrlib library users now need to call ``__enter__`` and ``__exit__`` on

  the result of ``bzrlib.initialize``. This change was made when fixing

  the bad habit recent bzr versions have had of leaving progress bars 

  behind on the screen. That required calling another function before

  exiting the program, and it made sense to provide a full context

  manager at the same time. (Robert Collins)

* The ``bzr`` front end now requires a ``bzrlib.ui.ui_factory`` which is a

  context manager in the Python 2.5 and above sense. The bzrlib base class

  is such a manager, but third party UI factories which do not derive from

  ``bzrlib.ui.UIFactory`` will be incompatible with the command line front

  end.

* URLs like ``foo:bar/baz`` are now always parsed as a URL with scheme "foo"

  and path "bar/baz", even if bzr does not recognize "foo" as a known URL

  scheme.  Previously these URLs would be treated as local paths.

  (Gordon Tyler)

Further information

*******************

For more detailed information on the changes made, see the

the :doc:`../release-notes/index` for:

* the interim bzr `milestones <https://launchpad.net/bzr/2.2>`_

* the plugins you use.

For a summary of changes made in earlier releases, see:

* :doc:`whats-new-in-2.1`

.. vim: ft=rst