************ Config specs ************ A *config spec* is a set of instructions for assembling a source tree from separately maintained branches. This is like CVS's "modules" format. Config specs are very commonly used in Clearcase, and the main way of getting a new checkout. Scenarios: * One module is shared by several projects, and it needs to be present in a subdirectory of their trees to build. * There are different commit or stability rules for different parts of a tree. The simplest form is just a specification of branch sources, and where they should be assembled into the tree. Example:: . http://foo.net/fooapp ./libbaz http://foo.net/libbaz Normally the entire branch will be placed at this point, but sometimes subdirectory should be selected. Selecting just a single file rather than subdirectory might be problematic because we wouldn't have anywhere to put the control files. Each branch will have a .bzr directory at the top level. Changes on each branch can be pushed back independently. The tool needs to support (and be tested with) nested checkouts. Commands should normally only apply to a single tree, but there might be an option to descend into nested trees. One very important use case is a naive user checking out a tree that happens to use a configspec. This is transparent in cvs, but not at all so in Arch. The ``svn:externals`` mechanism in Subversion works like this. One interesting idea from Aaron is that all branches should be like this: the latest-patch pointer can be generalized to in fact name several patches that should be assembled in subdirectories. A simplest branch names just one, assembled to the base directory. You might want to specify the parent branches for each one as well....