~bzr-pqm/bzr/bzr.dev

*************************
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 2.2.2 focused on fixes to improve our Ubuntu release workflow (which
should also help all other distributions).

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

Bazaar 2.2.3 focused on fixes related to interactions with the launchpad
server and python-2.7 compatibility.

Bazaar 2.2.4 fixed a regression for some interactions with the launchpad
server.

Bazaar 2.2.5 fixed a regression in some rare conflict resolutions and warns
when branching an out-of-date ubuntu packaging branch.

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