Launchpad itself

Start using launchpad's bazaar won't work

Asked by Tiefflieger

Please forgive me if I am a little annoyed, but I can't start using launchpad's bazaar service. I've recently registered a project and am still playing around with it : http://launchpad.net/cassiopeia

This is VERY frustrating, as I know the CVS VCS and were very curious for Bazaar features. To give it a try, I created this branch: https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~tiefflieger/cassiopeia/branch0001 , and everything seems just fine. But for every single bzr - command I locally did, I got an error. I even started at some point using all variations of bzr-commands, just to see if there is anything that won't give me an error.
Launchpad says "this branch hasn't been pushed to yet" and "Update this branch: bzr push lp:cassiopeia/0.001"
This makes me kinda laugh, I get the following result:

me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr push lp:cassiopeia/0.001
bzr: ERROR: Not a branch: "/home/me/temp/bzr/".

I guess, I have to tell my local bazaar somehow, what branch /home/jens/temp/bzr should be, but all I got are more error-messages.
Here's what I've tried:

me@me-desktop:~/temp$ mkdir bzr
me@me-desktop:~/temp$ cd bzr
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ touch soeinmist
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr push lp:cassiopeia/0.001
#bzr: ERROR: Not a branch: "/home/me/temp/bzr/".
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr init lp:cassiopeia/0.001
bzr: ERROR: Already a branch: "lp:cassiopeia/0.001".
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr add
bzr: ERROR: Not a branch: "/home/me/temp/bzr/".
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr checkout
bzr: ERROR: Not a branch: "/home/me/temp/bzr/".
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr checkout lp:cassiopeia/0.001.
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr add lp:cassiopeia/0.001
bzr: ERROR: No WorkingTree exists for "bzr+ssh://<email address hidden>/%7Etiefflieger/cassiopeia/branch0001/".
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr pull lp:cassiopeia/0.001
bzr: ERROR: Not a branch: "/home/me/temp/bzr/".
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr update lp:cassiopeia/0.001
bzr: ERROR: No WorkingTree exists for "bzr+ssh://<email address hidden>/%7Etiefflieger/cassiopeia/branch0001/".
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr update
bzr: ERROR: Not a branch: "/home/me/temp/bzr/".
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr branch lp:cassiopeia/0.001
bzr: ERROR: Target directory "0.001" already exists.
me@me-desktop:~/temp/bzr$ bzr whoami
Peter Paul <me@me-desktop>

Well, I have to correct myself: the whoami-command didn't yield an error message *phew*

I'm considering marking this question as a bug, because the launchpad's message "use blablabla to update this branch" is simply wrong.

Let's say I created a branch "myfirstbranch" in http://launchpad.net/cassiopeia , and I have a local directory ~/myproject with only one file in it named myfile. This local directory is unattended by any VCS tool. What commands should I use to tell bazaar to manage this directory and all its files in the branch "myfirstbranch"?
(In CVS, I would do something like

cvs co myfirstbranch
cvs add
cvs ci

in the directory ~/myproject)

Thanks a lot for your help :-)

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Launchpad itself Edit question
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Solved by:
Celso Providelo
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Revision history for this message
Tiefflieger (tiefflieger) said : 		#1

I finnally figured it out myself :)
bzr branch lp:cassiopeia/0.001
bzr add #really need this?
bzr commit #really need this?
bzr push lp:cassiopeia/0.001

Strange thing: As soon as added one single file, on https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~tiefflieger/cassiopeia/branch0001 appeared the message
"Get this branch: bzr branch lp:cassiopeia/0.001"
But not in the empty trunk-branch. Shouldn't the message appear in empty branches, too? Is this a bug? Or am I wrong?

Revision history for this message
Celso Providelo (cprov) said : 		#2

Hi,

It's seems to me that you are having problems to understand what a DVCS does. Please take few minutes to check how `bzr` works, http://doc.bazaar-vcs.org/latest/en/mini-tutorial/index.html is a very good start.

Regarding the fact that 'user-hints' are not presented for empty branches, I think it's not a bug. What's the point in suggesting someone to download a empty revisioned directory ? Unless you have a strong arguments in its favor ;)

Revision history for this message
Tiefflieger (tiefflieger) said : 		#3

Hi,

again, thanks for your answer :-)

You're right, I'm not familiar to distributed VCS. Thanks for the page, but allthough bazaar is quite new, there seem to be tons of "mini short tutorial faq in 5 mins" pages, I think I'll just stick to bazaar's own user's guide and reference.

Concerning the user-hints: For an empty branch, I see the user-hint:

Update this branch: bzr push lp:~tiefflieger/cassiopeia/emptybranch

But that doesn't help. If I'm new and want to give launchpad's bazaar a try, I have some local files I want to put under bazaar's resposibility for a launchpad project. So I created a branch in launchpad, saw the user hint

Update this branch: bzr push lp:~tiefflieger/cassiopeia/emptybranch

and thought "cool, I'll just type that command in my local project's folder, then bazaar somehow manages it (i.e. creates local branch if none exists) and uploads my local files to launchpad"

I think that some hints on how to upload files to an empty branch would do just fine. Maybe something like
"To initialize a local branch in local your project's root: bzr branch lp:~tiefflieger/cassiopeia/emptybranch"
and
"After that, to synchronize your local branch with branch on launchpad: bzr add
bzr commit
bzr push lp:~tiefflieger/cassiopeia/emptybranch" (I don't know if these commands are really correct)

that would be needed for empty branches only.

Revision history for this message
Best Celso Providelo (cprov) said : 		#4

I see that the Launchpad branch command-hint assumes the user knows he needs a functional branch with his changes committed before issues the `push` to the designed locations.

Note that it's not only important for the first push, but every time a change is made. In my understand that's a basic knowledge for VCS (distributed or centralized) and `bzr st` list uncommitted changes in a very understandable way.

Anyway, if you think we could and should do better in documentation for branches if we use your suggestions, please report a bug in launchpad-bazaar product and link to this question for context.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Revision history for this message
Tiefflieger (tiefflieger) said : 		#5

As I said, I'm not familiar with distributed VCS, thus is don't know what push exactly does. I thought it'd create a local branch automatically and upload it then to launchpad :-) .

I'll think about doing as you proposed and file a bug. Thanks a lot for your patient answerings,

Greets,

Tiefflieger

Revision history for this message
Tiefflieger (tiefflieger) said : 		#6

Thanks Celso Providelo, that solved my question.