~bzr-pqm/bzr/bzr.dev

####################
Bazaar Release Notes
####################

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1

bzr 2.4.0
#########

:2.4.0: NOT RELEASED YET

External Compatibility Breaks
*****************************

.. These may require users to change the way they use Bazaar.

New Features
************

.. New commands, options, etc that users may wish to try out.

Improvements
************

.. Improvements to existing commands, especially improved performance 
   or memory usage, or better results.

Bug Fixes
*********

.. Fixes for situations where bzr would previously crash or give incorrect
   or undesirable results.

* Accessing a packaging branch on Launchpad (eg, ``lp:ubuntu/bzr``) now
  checks to see if the most recent published source package version for
  that project is present in the branch tags. This should help developers
  trust whether the packaging branch is up-to-date and can be used for new
  changes. The level of verbosity is controlled by the config item
  ``launchpad.packaging_verbosity``. It can be set to one of

  off
    disable all checks


  minimal
    only display if the branch is out-of-date

  short
    also display single-line up-to-date and missing,


  all
    (default) display multi-line content for all states


  (John Arbash Meinel, #609187, #812928)


* The fix for bug #513709 caused us to open a new connection when
  switching a lightweight checkout that was pointing at a bound branch.
  This isn't necessary because we know the master URL without opening it,
  avoiding an extra SSH connection, etc.
  (John Arbash Meinel, #812285)

Documentation
*************

.. Improved or updated documentation.

API Changes
***********

.. Changes that may require updates in plugins or other code that uses
   bzrlib.

Internals
*********

.. Major internal changes, unlikely to be visible to users or plugin 
   developers, but interesting for bzr developers.

Testing
*******

.. Fixes and changes that are only relevant to bzr's test framework and 
   suite.  This can include new facilities for writing tests, fixes to 
   spurious test failures and changes to the way things should be tested.

* `BranchBuilder.build_snapshot` now supports a "flush" action.  This
  cleanly and reliably allows tests using `BranchBuilder` to construct
  branches that e.g. rename files out of a directory and unversion that
  directory in the same revision.  Previously some changes were impossible
  due to the order that `build_snapshot` performs its actions.
  (Andrew Bennetts)

* `TestCaseWithMemoryTransport` is faster now: `_check_safety_net` now
  just compares the bytes in the dirstate file to its pristine state,
  rather than opening the WorkingTree and calling ``last_revision()``.
  This reduces the overall test suite time by about 10% on my laptop.
  (Andrew Bennetts)


bzr 2.4b5
#########

:2.4b5: 2011-07-07

This is the fifth (and last) beta of the 2.4 series leading to
2.4.0 release in Auguest 2011. Beta releases are suitable for
everyday use but may cause some incompatibilities with plugins.

This release includes all bug fixed in previous series known at
the time of this release.

External Compatibility Breaks
*****************************

None.

New Features
************

* New command ``verify-signatures`` to check if all commits or specified commits
  have digital signatures from trusted keys.  Requires python-gpgme to be
  installed.

* New option ``--signatures`` for ``bzr log`` to display digital signature
  verification results for each commit.

* Config option acceptable_keys to list which GPG keys are verified as trusted.

* Config option validate_signatures_in_log to always show signatures in 
  ``bzr log``.

Improvements
************

* ``Branch.open`` is now about 3x faster (about 2ms instead of 6.5ms).
  (Andrew Bennetts).

* Pack, dirstate, and index files are synced to persistent storage if 
  possible when writing finishes, to reduce the risk of problems caused by
  a machine crash or similar problem.  This can be turned off through the
  ``dirstate.fdatasync`` and ``repository.fdatasync`` options, which can
  be set in ``locations.conf`` or ``bazaar.conf``.  (Martin Pool,
  #343427)

Bug Fixes
*********

* Display a proper error message when a config file content cannot be
  decoded as UTF-8 or when it cannot be parsed.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #502060, #688677, #797246)

* Generate a single conflict (instead of two) when merging a branch
  modifying and renaming a file in a branch that deleted it (or vice-versa).
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #688101)

* Give a more helpful message when the bzr executable doesn't match the
  library.  (This typically happens because of a misconfigured PYTHONPATH
  or half-installed bzr.)  
  (Martin Pool, #804553)

* Properly load utf8-encoded config files. (Vincent Ladeuil, #799212)

* ``GraphThunkIdsToKeys.merge_sort`` now properly returns
  keys rather than ids. (Jelmer Vernooij, #799677)

* ``TreeTransformBase.fixup_new_roots`` can now check that a tree root
  is present. (Jelmer Vernooij, #801257)

API Changes
***********

* New attributes ``WorkingTreeFormat.supports_versioned_directories`` and
  ``RepositoryFormat.supports_versioned_directories``.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #765815)

* The "revno" field type when using the python version-info format is now
  a string (to handle dotted revnos) (Benoît Pierre, #796259)

Internals
*********

* Start implementing localization, starting with command help text (but not
  the command options themselves). This will allow bootstrapping the bzr
  internationalization process. (Inada Naoki)

Testing
*******

* Fix test failures when running as a homeless user (debian buildd). Tests
  leaking into ``${HOME}/.bzr.log`` should be detected properly now.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #798698)

bzr 2.4b4
#########

:2.4b4: 2011-06-16

This is the fourth beta of the 2.4 series, leading to a 2.4.0 release in
August 2011. Beta releases are suitable for everyday use but may cause some
incompatibilities with plugins.

This release includes all bug fixed in previous series known at the time of
this release.


External Compatibility Breaks
*****************************

.. These may require users to change the way they use Bazaar.

* Do not treat configuration option 'check_signatures = require' as if
  it were 'create_signatures = always' (Jonathan Riddell)

New Features
************

.. New commands, options, etc that users may wish to try out.

* Hooks have been added for config stacks: ``get``, ``set`` and ``remove``
  are called when an option is respectively read, modified or deleted. Also
  added ``load`` and ``save`` hooks for config stores, called when the
  stores are loaded or saved.  (Vincent Ladeuil)

* New hook server_exception in bzrlib.smart.server to catch any
  exception caused while running bzr serve.
  (Jonathan Riddell, #274578)

* New hook set_commit_message in bzrlib.msgeditor to set a commit message
  and revision properties.  (Jonathan Riddell, #274578)

* Support ``-S`` as an alias for ``--short`` for the ``log`` and
  ``missing`` commands. (Martin von Gagern, #38655)

Improvements
************

.. Improvements to existing commands, especially improved performance 
   or memory usage, or better results.

* ``bzr annotate`` can be run without setting whoami data first.
  (Jonathan Riddell, #667408)

Bug Fixes
*********

.. Fixes for situations where bzr would previously crash or give incorrect
   or undesirable results.

* Bazaar can now detect when a lock file is held by a dead process
  originating from the same machine, and steal the lock after printing a
  message to the user.  This is off by default, for safety, but can be
  turned on by setting the configuration variable ``locks.steal_dead`` to
  ``True``.
  (Martin Pool, #220464)

* ``bzr version-info`` now works when the tree is on a dotted revno.
  (Benoît Pierre, #796259)

* Credentials in the log output produced by ``-Dhttp`` are masked so users
  can more freely post them in bug reports. (Vincent Ladeuil, #723074)

* Fix a race condition for ``server_started`` hooks leading to a spurious
  test failure. (Vincent Ladeuil, #789167)

* Fix exporting subdirectory with ``--per-file-timestamps``.
  (Szilveszter Farkas, #795557)

* Handle files that get created but don't get used during TreeTransform.
  ``open()`` can create a file, and still raise an exception before it
  returns. So anything we might have created, make sure we destroy during
  ``finalize()``. (Martin [gz], #597686)

* ``pack_repo`` now uses ``Transport.move`` instead of
  ``Transport.rename``, deleting any existing targets even on SFTP.
  (Martin von Gagern, #421776)

* Pass the ``build_mo`` command to the rest of the setup() calls in
  setup.py. The ``bdist_wininst`` and ``py2exe`` code paths were failing
  because ``build_mo`` became a required step that they didn't know about.
  (John Arbash Meinel, #787122)

* Preserve existing ``root-id`` when merging an unrelated branch.
  (Aaron Bentley, #806356)

* Properly avoid re-adding a file after it changes case on CICP
  filesystems. (John Arbash Meinel, #798130)

* Reports the original error when an InvalidHttpResponse exception is
  encountered to facilitate debug. (Vincent Ladeuil, #788530)

* Reports a non-existant file error when trying to merge in a file
  that does not exist. (Jonathan Riddell, #330063)

* ``UIFactory.prompt``, ``UIFactory.get_username``,
  ``UIFactory.get_password`` and ``UIFactory.get_boolean`` now require a
  unicode prompt to be passed in. (Jelmer Vernooij, #592083)

* Support merging into the empty tree. (Aaron Bentley, #595328)

Documentation
*************

.. Improved or updated documentation.

* Improve documentation of ``bzr merge --force``.
  (Neil Martinsen-Burrell, #767307)

* Make docs for configuration options for digital signatures match 
  reality. (Jonathan Riddell)

* Add user-guide page on GPG signatures. (Jonathan Riddell)

API Changes
***********

.. Changes that may require updates in plugins or other code that uses
   bzrlib.

* Checking for a file id in a `Tree` or `Inventory` using ``in`` is now
  deprecated.  Instead, use `has_id`.
  (Martin Pool)

* Exporters are now all exposed as generators, rather than as single-call
  functions, so that calling code can take stream the output.
  (Xaav, Martin Pool)

* Information about held lockdir locks returned from eg `LockDir.peek` is
  now represented as a `LockHeldInfo` object, rather than a plain
  Python dict.
  (Martin Pool)

* Remove `file_status` function.
  (Martin Pool)

* ``Repository.iter_reverse_revision_history`` is now deprecated.
  Use ``Graph.iter_lefthand_ancestry`` instead.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #739481)

* ``Repository.get_ancestry`` has been deprecated. Use
  ``Graph.iter_ancestry`` instead.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #784511)

Internals
*********

.. Major internal changes, unlikely to be visible to users or plugin 
   developers, but interesting for bzr developers.

* ``tools/check-newsbugs.py`` accepts a ``--browser`` option to open
  corresponding launchpad pages in a browser. (Vincent Ladeuil)

Testing
*******

.. Fixes and changes that are only relevant to bzr's test framework and 
   suite.  This can include new facilities for writing tests, fixes to 
   spurious test failures and changes to the way things should be tested.

* A `ImportTariffTestCase` base class has been added in
  ``bzrlib.tests.test_import_tariff``, which can be used for import tariff
  tests in plugins. (Jelmer Vernooij, #793465)

* Fix deadlock in `TestImportTariffs.test_simple_serve` when stderr gets
  more output than fits in the default buffer.  This was happening on the
  Windows buildslave, and could easily happen in other circumstances where
  the default OS buffer size for pipes is small or the ``python -v``
  output is large.  (Andrew Bennetts, #784802)

* Fix spurious test failure on OSX for WorkingTreeFormat2.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #787942)

* Re-target ``bb.test_merge.TestMerge.test_merge_reversed_revision_range``
  and rewrite it as a parameterized test to avoid unrelated failures.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #795456)

* Show log file contents from subprocesses started by
  `start_bzr_subprocess` in test failure details.  This may help diagnose
  strange hangs and failures involving subprocesses.  (Andrew Bennetts)

* Skip ``utextwrap`` tests when ``sphinx`` breaks text_wrap by an hostile
  monkeypatch to textwrap.TextWrapper.wordsep_re.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #785098)

* Multiple ``selftest --exclude`` options are now combined instead of
  overriding each other. (Vincent Ladeuil, #746991)

* Restore some ``FTPTransport`` test coverage by allowing ``pyftpdlib
  0.6.0`` to be used. Also restore ``medusa`` support while leaving it
  disabled to make it easier to use if/when we can in the future.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #781140)

* `TestImportTariffs` no longer uses the real ``$HOME``.  This prevents it
  from polluting ``$HOME/.bzr.log`` or being accidentally influenced by
  user configuration such as aliases.  It still runs with all the user's
  plugins enabled, as intended.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, Andrew Bennetts, #789505)


bzr 2.4b3
#########

:2.4b3: 2011-05-26

This is the third beta of the 2.4 series, leading to a 2.4.0 release in
August 2011. Beta releases are suitable for everyday use but may cause some
incompatibilities with plugins.

This release includes all bug fixed in previous series known at the time of
this release.


External Compatibility Breaks
*****************************

.. These may require users to change the way they use Bazaar.

* ``bzr-2.4`` has officially dropped support for python2.4 and python2.5.
  We will continue to maintain ``bzr-2.3`` for people who still need to
  use those versions of python. (John Arbash Meinel)

New Features
************

.. New commands, options, etc that users may wish to try out.

* The text compressor used for 2a repositories now has a tweakable
  parameter that can be set in bazaar.conf.
  ``bzr.groupcompress.max_entries_per_source`` default of 65536.
  When doing compression, we build up an index of locations to match
  against. Setting this higher will result in slightly better compression,
  at a cost of more memory. Note that a value of 65k represents fully
  sampling a 1MB file. So this only has an effect when compressing texts
  larger than N*16 bytes. (John Arbash Meinel, #602614)

Improvements
************

.. Improvements to existing commands, especially improved performance 
   or memory usage, or better results.

* ``bzr branch --stacked`` from a smart server uses the network a little
  more efficiently.  For a simple branch it reduces the number of
  round-trips by about 20%.  (Andrew Bennetts)

* ``bzr log --line`` scales the width of the author field with the size of
  the line.  This means that the full author name is shown when the
  environment variable BZR_COLUMNS=0.  (Neil Martinsen-Burrell)

* ``bzr pull`` now properly triggers the fast
  ``CHKInventory.iter_changes`` rather than the slow generic
  inter-Inventory changes. It used to use a ``DirStateRevisionTree`` as
  one of the source trees, which is faster when we have to read the whole
  inventory anyway, but much slower when we can get just the delta out of
  the repository. On a 70k record tree, this changes ``bzr pull`` from 28s
  down to 17s. (John Arbash Meinel, #780677)

* Slightly reduced memory consumption when fetching into a 2a repository
  by reusing existing caching a little better.  (Andrew Bennetts)

* Speed up ``bzr status`` by a little bit when there are a couple of
  modified files. We now track how many files we have seen that need
  updating, and only rewrite the dirstate file if enough of them have
  changed. The default is 10, and can be overridden by setting the branch
  option "``bzr.workingtree.worth_saving_limit``".
  (Ian Clatworthy, John Arbash Meinel, #380202)

* Speed up ``bzr uncommit``. Instead of resetting the dirstate from
  scratch, use ``update_basis_by_delta``, computing the delta from the
  repository. (John Arbash Meinel, #780544)

Bug Fixes
*********

.. Fixes for situations where bzr would previously crash or give incorrect
   or undesirable results.

* All Tree types can now be exported as tar.*, zip or directories.
  (Aaron Bentley)
  
* ``bzr merge --no-remember location`` never sets ``submit_branch``.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #782169)

* ``bzr pull --no-remember location`` never sets
  ``parent_location``.  ``bzr push --no-remember location`` never
  sets ``push_location``.  ``bzr send --no-remember
  submit_location public_location`` never sets ``submit_branch``
  nor ``public_branch``.  (Vincent Ladeuil)

* Conflicts involving non-ascii filenames are now properly reported rather
  than failing with a UnicodeEncodeError. (Martin [GZ], #686161)

* Correct parent is now set when using 'switch -b' with bound branches.
  (A. S. Budden, #513709)

* Fix `bzr plugins` regression in bzr 2.4 which resulted in a traceback
  from writelines on ckj terminals. (Martin [GZ], #754082)

* ``WT.inventory`` and ``WT.iter_entries_by_dir()`` was not correctly
  reporting subdirectories that were tree references (in formats that
  supported them). (John Arbash Meinel, #764677)

* Merging into empty branches now gives an error as this is currently
  not supported. (Jonathan Riddell, #242175)

* Do not show exception to user on pointless commit error.
  (Jonathan Riddell #317357)

* ``WT.update_basis_by_delta`` no longer requires that the deltas match
  the current WT state. This allows ``update_basis_by_delta`` to be used
  by more commands than just commit. Updating with a delta allows us to
  not load the whole inventory, which can take 10+s with large trees.
  (Jonathan Riddell, John Arbash Meinel, #781168)

* ``bzr mv --after old_name new_name`` now works if "new_name" is newly
  added. (Benoît Pierre)


Documentation
*************

.. Improved or updated documentation.

* Restore the workaround for option names including dots (--1.14) which was
  disabled when we stopped listing --1.9 as a format.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #782289)

API Changes
***********

.. Changes that may require updates in plugins or other code that uses
   bzrlib.

* ``annotate_file`` has been deprecated in favor of
  ``annotate_file_revision_tree``. (Jelmer Vernooij, #775598)

* ``Branch.fetch`` now takes an optional ``limit`` argument.
  (Andrew Bennetts, Jelmer Vernooij, #750175)

* ``Inter.get`` now raises ``NoCompatibleInter`` if there are no
  compatible optimisers rather than an instance of the class it is called
  on. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``Branch.push`` now takes a ``lossy`` argument.
  ``Branch.lossy_push`` has been removed.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* New method ``Repository.get_file_graph`` which can return the
  per-file revision graph. (Jelmer Vernooij, #775578)

* The default implementation of ``Branch`` is now oriented to
  storing the branch tip. Branch implementations which store the full
  history should now subclass ``FullHistoryBzrBranch``.
  ``Branch._last_revision_info`` has been renamed to
  ``Branch._read_last_revision_info`` (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``Tree.__iter__`` has been deprecated; use ``Tree.all_file_ids``
  instead.  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``Tree.get_symlink_target`` now takes an optional ``path``
  argument. (Jelmer Vernooij)

Internals
*********

.. Major internal changes, unlikely to be visible to users or plugin 
   developers, but interesting for bzr developers.

* ``MutableTree.smart_add`` now uses inventory deltas.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #146165)

* Removed ``bzrlib.branch._run_with_write_locked_target`` as
  ``bzrlib.cleanup`` provides the same functionality in a more general
  way.  (Andrew Bennetts)

Testing
*******

.. Fixes and changes that are only relevant to bzr's test framework and 
   suite.  This can include new facilities for writing tests, fixes to 
   spurious test failures and changes to the way things should be tested.

* A test that was expected to fail but passes instead now counts as a failure
  catching up with new testtools and subunit handling. (Martin [GZ], #654474)

* Make it easier for plugins to reuse the per_workingtree scenarios by
  restoring the wt_scenarios helper that was accidentally deleted.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #783472)

* Removed ``test_breakin`` tests that were excessively prone to hanging,
  did not work on Wine, and partly already disabled.
  (Martin Pool, #408814, #746985)

* Windows locations are different and should be tested accordingly.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #788131)

bzr 2.4b2
#########

:2.4b2: 2011-04-28

This is the second beta of the 2.4 series, leading to a 2.4.0 release in
August 2011. Beta releases are suitable for everyday use but may cause some
incompatibilities with plugins.

This release includes all bug fixed in previous series known at the time of
this release.


External Compatibility Breaks
*****************************

.. These may require users to change the way they use Bazaar.

* Two command synonyms for ``bzr branch`` have been deprecated, to avoid
  confusion and to allow the names to later be reused.  The removed names
  are: ``get`` and ``clone``.   (Martin Pool, #506265)

New Features
************

.. New commands, options, etc that users may wish to try out.

* ``bzr commit`` now supports a ``--lossy`` argument that can be used
  to discard any data that can not be natively represented when committing
  to a foreign VCS. (Jelmer Vernooij, #587721)

Improvements
************

.. Improvements to existing commands, especially improved performance 
   or memory usage, or better results.

* ``bzr merge`` in large trees is now significantly faster. On a 70k entry
  tree, the time went from ~3min down to 30s. This also effects ``bzr pull``
  and ``bzr update`` since they use the same merge logic to update the
  WorkingTree.  (John Arbash Meinel, #759091)

* ``bzr revert`` now properly uses ``bzr status``'s optimized
  ``iter_changes``. This can be a significant performance difference (33s
  to 5s on large trees). (John Arbash Meinel, #759096)

* Resolve ``lp:FOO`` urls locally rather than doing an XMLRPC request if
  the user has done ``bzr launchpad-login``. The bzr+ssh URLs were already
  being handed off to the remote server anyway (xmlrpc has been mapping
  ``lp:bzr`` to ``bzr+ssh://bazaar.launchpad.net/+branch/bzr``, rather
  than ``bzr+ssh://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bzr-pqm/bzr/bzr.dev`` for a few
  months now.) By doing it ourselves, we can cut out substantial startup
  time. From Netherlands to London it was taking 368ms to do the XMLRPC
  call as much as 2s from Sydney. You can test the local logic by using
  ``-Dlaunchpad``.  (John Arbash Meinel, #397739)

* When building a new WorkingTree (such as during ``bzr co`` or
  ``bzr branch``) we now properly store the stat and hash of files that
  are old enough. This saves a fair amount of time on the first
  ``bzr status`` (on a 500MB tree, it saves about 30+s).
  (John Arbash Meinel, #740932)


Bug Fixes
*********

.. Fixes for situations where bzr would previously crash or give incorrect
   or undesirable results.

* Arguments that can't be decoded to unicode in the current posix locale give
  a clearer error message without a traceback. (Martin [gz], #745712)

* ``bzrlib.log._DEFAULT_REQUEST_PARAMS`` is no longer accidentally
  mutated by ``bzrlib.log._apply_log_request_defaults``.  In practice
  these default values aren't relied on very often so this probably
  wasn't causing any trouble.  (Andrew Bennetts)

* ``bzr log`` now works on revisions which are not in the current branch.
  (Matt Giuca, #241998)

* Don't rewrite the dirstate file when non-interesting changes have
  occurred. This can significantly improve 'bzr status' times when there
  are only small changes to a large tree.
  (Ian Clatworthy, John Arbash Meinel, #380202)

* Lazy hooks are now reset between test runs. (Jelmer Vernooij, #745566)

* ``bzrlib.merge.Merge`` now calls ``iter_changes`` without
  ``include_unversioned=True``. This makes it significantly faster in many
  cases, because it only looks at modified files, rather than building
  information about all files. This can cause failures in other
  TreeTransform code, because it had been expecting to know the names of
  things which had not changed (such as parent directories). All cases we
  know about so far have been fixed, but there may be fallout for edge
  cases that we are missing. (John Arbash Meinel, #759091)

* ``SFTPTransport`` is more pro-active about closing file-handles. This
  reduces the chance of having threads fail from async requests while
  running the test suite. (John Arbash Meinel, #656170)

* Standalone bzr.exe installation on Windows: user can put additional python 
  libraries into ``site-packages`` subdirectory of the installation directory,
  this might be required for "installing" extra dependencies for some plugins.
  (Alexander Belchenko, #743256)

* ``transform.revert()`` has been updated to use
  ``wt.iter_changes(basis_tree)`` rather than
  ``basis_tree.iter_changes(wt)``. This allows the optimized code path to
  kick in, improving ``bzr revert`` times significantly (33s to 4s on
  large trees, 0.7s to 0.3s on small trees.) (John Arbash Meinel, #759096)

* ``TreeTransform.create_file/new_file`` can now take an optional ``sha1``
  parameter. If supplied, when the transform is applied, it will then call
  ``self._tree._observed_sha1`` for those files. This lets us update the
  hash-cache for content that we create, preventing us from re-reading the
  content in the next ``bzr status``.  (John Arbash Meinel, #740932)

Documentation
*************

* Added a section about using a shared SSH account on a server for bzr+ssh
  access.  (Russell Smith)

* The documentation now recommends using SSH rather than SFTP in the
  tutorials and the examples, because that will generally be much faster
  and better in cases where it can be used.  SFTP is still available and
  mentioned as an alternative.  (Martin Pool, #636712)

API Changes
***********

.. Changes that may require updates in plugins or other code that uses
   bzrlib.

* ``Branch.update_revisions`` has been made private and should no
  longer be used by external users. Use ``Branch.pull`` or ``Branch.push``
  instead. (Jelmer Vernooij, #771765)

* Commands now have an `invoked_as` attribute, showing the name under
  which they were called before alias expansion.
  (Martin Pool)

* ``Hooks.create_hook`` is now deprecated in favour of ``Hooks.add_hook``.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* If you call `bzrlib.initialize` but forget to enter the resulting object
  as a context manager, bzrlib will now be initialized anyhow.
  (Previously simple programs calling bzrlib might find the library was
  mysteriously silent.)
  (Martin Pool)

* Inventory-specific functionality has been split out of ``Tree`` into
  a new ``InventoryTree`` class. Tree instances no longer
  necessarily provide an ``inventory`` attribute. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Inventory-specific functionality has been split out of ``RevisionTree``
  into a new ``InventoryRevisionTree`` class. RevisionTree instances no
  longer necessarily provide an ``inventory`` attribute. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* New method ``Hooks.uninstall_named_hook``. (Jelmer Vernooij, #301472)

* ``revision_graph_can_have_wrong_parents`` is now an attribute
  on ``RepositoryFormat`` rather than a method on ``Repository``.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``Testament`` now takes a ``tree`` rather than an
  ``inventory``. (Jelmer Vernooij, #762608)

* ``TestCase.failUnlessExists`` and ``failIfExists`` are deprecated in
  favour of ``assertPathExists`` and ``assertPathDoesNotExist`` 
  respectively.
  (Martin Pool)

* The ``revno`` parameter of ``log.LogRevision`` may now be None,
  representing a revision which is not in the current branch.
  (Matt Giuca, #241998)

* The various knit pack repository format classes have been moved
  from ``bzrlib.repofmt.pack_repo`` to
  ``bzrlib.repofmt.knitpack_repo``. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``RevisionTree`` now has a new method ``get_file_revision``.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``WorkingTree`` no longer provides an ``inventory``. Instead,
  all inventory-related functionality is now on the subclass
  ``InventoryWorkingTree`` that all native Bazaar working tree
  implementations derive from. (Jelmer Vernooij)

Internals
*********

.. Major internal changes, unlikely to be visible to users or plugin 
   developers, but interesting for bzr developers.

* Added ``osutils.lstat`` and ``osutils.fstat``. These are just the ``os``
  functions on Linux, but they are wrapped on Windows so that fstat
  matches lstat results across all python versions.
  (John Arbash Meinel)

* ``WorkingTree._observed_sha1`` also updates the 'size' column. It
  happened to be updated as a side-effect of commit, but if we start using
  the function elsewhere we might as well do it directly.
  (John Arbash Meinel)

Testing
*******

.. Fixes and changes that are only relevant to bzr's test framework and 
   suite.  This can include new facilities for writing tests, fixes to 
   spurious test failures and changes to the way things should be tested.

* Stop using `failIf`, `failUnless`, `failIfEqual`, etc, that give
  `PendingDeprecationWarnings` on Python2.7. 
  (Martin Pool, #760435)


bzr 2.4b1
#########

:2.4b1: 2011-03-17

This is the first beta of the 2.4 series, leading up to a 2.4.0
release in August 2011.  Beta releases are suitable for everyday use
but may cause some incompatibilities with plugins.  Some plugins may need
small updates to work with 2.4b1.

External Compatibility Breaks
*****************************

(none)

New Features
************

* Added ``changelog_merge`` plugin for merging changes to ``Changelog`` files
  in GNU format.  See ``bzr help changelog_merge`` for details.
  (Andrew Bennetts)
  
* Configuration options can now use references to other options in the same
  file by enclosing them with curly brackets (``{other_opt}``). This makes it
  possible to use, for example,
  ``push_location=lp:~vila/bzr/config-{nickname}`` in ``branch.conf`` when
  using a loom. During the beta period, the default behaviour is to disable
  this feature. It can be activated by declaring ``bzr.config.expand = True``
  in ``bazaar.conf``. (Vincent Ladeuil)

* External merge tools can now be configured in bazaar.conf. See
  ``bzr help configuration`` for more information.  (Gordon Tyler, #489915)

* The ``lp:`` directory service now supports Launchpad's QA staging.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #667483)

Improvements
************

* A new hidden command ``bzr repair-workingtree``. This is a way to force
  the dirstate file to be rebuilt, rather than using a ``bzr checkout``
  workaround. (John Arbash Meinel)

* Added a ``Branch.heads_to_fetch`` RPC to the smart server protocol.
  This allows formats from plugins (such as looms) to efficiently tell the
  client which revisions need to be fetched.  (Andrew Bennetts)

* Branching, merging and pulling a branch now copies revisions named in
  tags, not just the tag metadata.  (Andrew Bennetts, #309682)

* ``bzr cat-revision`` no longer requires a working tree.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #704405)

* ``bzr export --per-file-timestamps`` for .tar.gz files will now
  override the mtime for trees exported on Python 2.7 and later, which
  expose the 'mtime' field in gzip files. This makes the output of
  ``bzr export --per-file-timestamps`` for a particular tree
  deterministic.  (Jelmer Vernooij, #711226)

* ``bzr export --format=zip`` can now export to standard output,
  like the other exporters can. (Jelmer Vernooij, #513752)

* ``bzr export`` can now create ``.tar.xz`` and ``.tar.lzma`` files.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #551714)

* Getting all entries from ``CHKInventory.iter_entries_by_dir()`` has been
  sped up dramatically for large trees. Iterating by dir is not the best
  way to load data from a CHK inventory, so it preloads all the items in
  the correct order. (With the gcc-tree, this changes it (re)reading 8GB
  of CHK data, down to just 150MB.) This has noticeable affects for things
  like building checkouts, etc.  (John Arbash Meinel, #737234)

Bug Fixes
*********

* A MemoryError thrown on the server during a remote operation will now be
  usefully reported, and other unexpected errors will include the class name.
  (Martin [gz], #722416)

* ``bzr annotate -r-1 file`` will now properly annotate a deleted file.
  (Andrew King, #537442)

* ``bzr export`` to zip files will now set a mode on directories.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #207253)

* ``bzr export`` to tgz files will only write out the basename of the
  tarfile to the gzip file. (Jelmer Vernooij, #102234)

* ``bzr push --overwrite`` with an older revision specified will now correctly
  roll back the target branch. (Jelmer Vernooij, #386576)

* ``bzr lp-propose`` can now propose merges against packaging branches on
  Launchpad without requiring the target branch to be specified.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #704647)

* ``bzr lp-propose`` no longer requires a reviewer to be specified. It will
  instead leave setting the reviewer up to Launchpad if it was not specified.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #583772)

* ``bzr pull`` will now exit with exit code 1 if there were tag conflicts.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #213185)

* ``bzr mv`` user errors no longer throw UnicodeEncodeError with non-ascii
  paths, however they may still print junk if not on a UTF-8 terminal.
  (Martin [gz], #707954)

* ``bzr reconfigure --unstacked`` now copies revisions (and their
  ancestors) named in tags into the unstacked repository, not just the
  ancestry of the branch's tip.  (Andrew Bennetts, #401646)

* ``bzr serve`` no longer crashes when a server_started hook is installed and
  IPv6 support is available on the system. (Jelmer Vernooij, #293697)

* ``bzr status`` will not rewrite the dirstate file if it only has
  'trivial' changes. (Currently limited to dir updates and newly-added
  files changing state.) This saves a bit of time for regular operations.
  eg. ``bzr status`` in a 100k tree takes 1.4s to compute the status, but 1s
  to re-save the dirstate file. (John Arbash Meinel, #765881)

* ``bzr tags`` will no longer choke on branches with ghost revisions in
  their mainline and tags on revisions not in the branch ancestry. 
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #397556)

* ``bzr whoami`` will now display an error if both a new identity and
  ``--email`` were specified. (Jelmer Vernooij, #680449)

* ``launchpadlib`` doesn't provide the ``uris`` module in some old versions.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #706835)

* Empty entries in the ``NO_PROXY`` variable are no longer treated as matching
  every host.
  (Martin Pool, #586341)

* Plugins incompatible with the current version of bzr no longer produce a
  warning on every command invocation.  Instead, a message is shown by
  ``bzr plugins`` and in crash reports.
  (#704195, Martin Pool)

* The "pretty" version of ``needs_read_lock`` and ``needs_write_lock`` now
  preserves the identity of default parameter values.
  (Andrew Bennetts, #718569)

* ``bzr dump-btree --raw`` no longer tracebacks on a B-Tree file
  containing no rows. (Eric Siegerman, #715508)

* Fix ``bzr lp-mirror`` to work on command line branch URLs and branches
  without an explicit public location. (Max Bowsher)

* On Python 2.6 and higher, use multiprocessing.cpu_count() to retrieve the
  number of available processors. (Jelmer Vernooij, #693140)

API Changes
***********

* Added ``Branch.heads_to_fetch`` method.  Implementations of the Branch API
  must now inherit or implement this method.  (Andrew Bennetts, #721328)
  
* Added ``bzrlib.mergetools`` module with helper functions for working with
  the list of external merge tools. (Gordon Tyler, #489915)

* All methods and arguments that were deprecated before 2.0
  have been removed. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Branch formats should now be registered on the format registry
  (``bzrlib.branch.format_registry``) rather than using the class
  methods on ``BranchFormat``. (Jelmer Vernooij, #714729)

* ``Branch.set_revision_history`` is now deprecated.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``BranchFormat.supports_leaving_lock()`` and
  ``RepositoryFormat.supports_leaving_lock`` flags have been added.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``Branch.fetch`` implementations must now accept an optional
  ``fetch_tags`` keyword argument. (Andrew Bennetts)

* ``Branch.import_last_revision_info`` is deprecated.  Use the
  ``import_last_revision_info_and_tags`` method instead.
  (Andrew Bennetts)

* Because it was too specific to BzrDir implementations,
  ``ControlDir.sprout`` no longer has a default implementation; it now
  raises ``NotImplementedError``. (Jelmer Vernooij, #717937)

* ``bzrlib.deprecated_graph`` has been removed. ``bzrlib.graph``
  scales better tree and should be used instead.
  (Jelmer Vernooij, #733612)

* ``ControlDirFormat.register_format`` has been removed. Instead,
  ``Prober`` implementations should now implement a ``known_formats``
  method. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ControlDirFormats can now provide a ``check_status`` method and
  raise a custom exception or warning when an unsupported or deprecated
  format is being opened.  (Jelmer Vernooij, #731311)

* ``bzrlib.revionspec.dwim_revspecs`` is deprecated.
  Use ``bzrlib.revisionspec.RevisionSpec_dwim.append_possible_revspec`` and
  ``bzrlib.revisionspec.RevisionSpec_dwim.append_possible_lazy_revspec``
  instead.  (Jelmer Vernooij, #721971)

* ``BzrDirFormat`` has a new attribute ``fixed_components`` that
  indicates whether the components of the bzrdir can be upgraded
  independent of the ``BzrDir``. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``BzrProber.register_format`` and ``BzrProber.unregister_format`` are
  now deprecated in favour of the ``BzrProber.formats`` format registry.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* ``ControlDir`` implementations no longer have to provide the
  ``get_branch_transport``, ``get_workingtree_transport`` and
  ``get_repository_transport`` methods.  (Jelmer Vernooij, #730325)

* ``Converter`` has been moved from ``bzrlib.bzrdir`` to
  ``bzrlib.controldir``. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Repository formats can now provide
  ``_get_extra_interrepo_test_combinations`` in the same module 
  to provide extra test combinations for ``bzrlib.tests.per_repository``.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Repository formats should now be registered on the format registry
  (``bzrlib.repository.format_registry``) rather than using the class
  methods on ``RepositoryFormat``. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Repository formats can now indicate they do not support the full
  VersionedFiles API by setting the ``supports_full_versioned_files``
  attribute to False. A subset of the VersionedFiles API
  (signatures and text graphs) still needs to be supported.
  (Jelmer Vernooij)

* Repository formats have a new method ``is_deprecated`` that
  implementations can override to return True to trigger a deprecation
  warning. (Jelmer Vernooij)

* The ``revision_id`` parameter of
  ``Repository.search_missing_revision_ids`` and
  ``InterRepository.search_missing_revision_ids`` is deprecated.  It is
  replaced by the ``revision_ids`` parameter.  (Andrew Bennetts)

* Working tree formats should now be registered on the format registry
  (``bzrlib.working_tree.format_registry``) rather than using the class
  methods on ``WorkingTreeFormat``. (Jelmer Vernooij, #714730)

* Exporting may now be done with a generator
  (``bzrlib.export.get_export_generator``) (Geoff/xaav, #791005)

Internals
*********

* ``CatchingExceptionThread`` (formerly ThreadWithException) has been moved
  out of the ``bzrlib.tests`` hierarchy to make it clearer that it can be used
  outside of tests. This class makes it easier to track exceptions in threads
  by catching them so they can be re-raised in the controlling thread. It's
  available in the ``bzrlib.cethread`` module.  (Vincent Ladeuil)

* Correctly propogate malloc failures from diff-delta.c code as MemoryError
  so OOM conditions during groupcompress are clearly reported. This entailed a
  change to several function signatures. (Martin [gz], #633336)

* ``HookPoint.lazy_hook`` and ``Hooks.install_named_lazy_hook`` can install 
  hooks for which the callable is loaded lazily.  (Jelmer Vernooij)

Testing
*******

* The Range parsing for HTTP requests will correctly parse incomplete ranges.
  (Vincent Ladeuil, #731240)

..
   vim: tw=74 ft=rst ff=unix