Turning a branch into a checkout

If you have a local branch and wish to make it a checkout, use the bind command like this:

bzr bind sftp://centralhost/srv/bzr/PROJECT/trunk

This is necessary, for example, after creating a central branch using push as illustrated in the previous section.

After this, commits will be applied to the bound branch before being applied locally.

Turning a checkout into a branch

If you have a checkout and wish to make it a normal branch, use the unbind command like this:

bzr unbind

After this, commits will only be applied locally.

Getting a checkout

When working in a team using a central branch, one person needs to provide some initial content as shown in the previous section. After that, each person should use the checkout command to create their local checkout, i.e. the sandbox in which they will make their changes.

Unlike Subversion and CVS, in Bazaar the checkout command creates a local full copy of history in addition to creating a working tree holding the latest content. This means that operations such as diff and log are fast and can still be used when disconnected from the central location.

Getting a lightweight checkout

While Bazaar does its best to efficiently store version history, there are occasions when the history is simply not wanted. For example, if your team is managing the content of a web site using Bazaar with a central repository, then your release process might be as simple as updating a checkout of the content on the public web server. In this case, you probably don’t want the history downloaded to that location as doing so:

• wastes disk space holding history that isn’t needed there
• exposes a Bazaar branch that you may want kept private.

To get a history-less checkout in Bazaar, use the --lightweight option like this:

bzr checkout --lightweight sftp://centralhost/srv/bzr/PROJECT/trunk

Of course, many of the benefits of a normal checkout are lost by doing this but that’s a tradeoff you can make if and when it makes sense.

The --lightweight option only applies to checkouts, not to all branches.

Note: If your code base is really large and disk space on your computer is limited, lightweight checkouts may be the right choice for you. Be sure to consider all your options though including shared repositories, stacked branches, and reusing a checkout.

Updating to the latest content

One of the important aspects of working in lockstep with others is keeping your checkout up to date with the latest changes made to the central branch. Just as you would in Subversion or CVS, you do this in Bazaar by using the update command like this:

bzr update

This gets any new revisions available in the bound branch and merges your local changes, if any.

Handling commit failures

Note that your checkout must be up to date with the bound branch before running commit. Bazaar is actually stricter about this than Subversion or CVS - you need to be up to date with the full tree, not just for the files you’ve changed. Bazaar will ask you to run update if it detects that a revision has been added to the central location since you last updated.

If the network connection to the bound branch is lost, the commit will fail. Some alternative ways of working around that are outlined next.