Configuring Bazaar
==================

Telling Bazaar about yourself
-----------------------------

One function of a version control system is to keep track of who changed
what.  In a decentralized system, that requires an identifier for each
author that is globally unique.  Most people already have one of these: an
email address. Bazaar is smart enough to automatically generate an email
address by looking up your username and hostname. If you don't like the
guess that Bazaar makes, then use the ``whoami`` command to set the
identifier you want::

    % bzr whoami "Your Name <email@example.com>"

If ``whoami`` is used without an argument, the current value is displayed.

Using a network proxy
---------------------

If your network requires that you use an http proxy for outbound
connections, you must set the ``http_proxy`` variable.  If the proxy is
also required for https connections, you need to set ``https_proxy`` too.
If you need these and don't have them set, you may find that connections
to Launchpad or other external servers fail or time out.

On Unix you typically want to set these in ``/etc/environment`` or
``~/.bash_profile`` and on Windows in the user profile.

::

  http_proxy=http://proxy.example.com:3128/
  https_proxy=http://proxy.example.com:3128/

The ``no_proxy`` variable can be set to a comma-separated list of hosts
which shouldn't be reached by the proxy.  (See
<http://docs.python.org/library/urllib.html> for more details.)


Configuration files
-------------------

Configuration files are located in ``$HOME/.bazaar`` on Unix and
``C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Bazaar\2.0`` on
Windows. There are three primary configuration files in this location:

* ``bazaar.conf`` describes default configuration options,

* ``locations.conf`` describes configuration information for
  specific branch locations,

* ``authentication.conf`` describes credential information for
  remote servers.

Each branch can also contain a configuration file that sets values specific
to that branch. This file is found at ``.bzr/branch/branch.conf`` within the
branch. This file is visible to **all users of a branch**. If you wish to
override one of the values for a branch with a setting that is specific to you,
then you can do so in ``locations.conf``.

Here is sample content of ``bazaar.conf`` after setting an email address using
the ``whoami`` command::

  [DEFAULT]
  email = Your Name <email@example.com>

For further details on the syntax and configuration settings supported, see
`Configuration Settings <../user-reference/configuration-help.html>`_
in the Bazaar User Reference.


Rule-based preferences
----------------------

Some commands and plugins provide custom processing on files matching
certain patterns. Per-user rule-based preferences are defined in
``BZR_HOME/rules``.

For further information on how rules are searched and the detailed syntax of
the relevant files, see `Rules <../user-reference/rules-help.html>`_
in the Bazaar User Reference.