yet another dvcs shootout (this time python-devel)

[Paul Moore]

2008/11/5 Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net>:
> Shared repositories have nothing to do with initial clone speed.

Hmm, and yet the recommendation for the Python repo is to download a
tarball of a shared repo, then pull into that. I assumed that was
intended to be faster than a simple bzr branch from the main repo.

> As a Bazaar developer, I totally support you organising your repositories
> as and how you desire.

Fair enough, and my apologies for putting words into your mouth. But
nevertheless, whenever I've said that I have a Bazaar branch and bzr
branch to create a second branch from it is annoyingly slow (and hence
limits my ability to branch freely) the suggestions have always been
to use a shared repo - which adds an extra directory level that I
don't want. It seems to be the standard answer to "bzr branch is slow"
comments. Which in turn gives the impression that standalone branches
are to an extent second-class citizens (at least in terms of
performance focus).

> Slow initial clone speed is a serious problem  - one
> we've done a lot of work on, with both a similar feature to hg's history
> punching (but more similar to git's alternates), and direct performance
> work. I just tried the bzr component of the above comparison with bzr's
> 1.8 release (about 5 months newer than 1.5):
> Branched 37403
> revision(s).
>
> real    4m26.156s
> user    3m56.170s
> sys     0m11.020s

That's a huge difference, and certainly emphasizes the importance of
not basing my opinions on older versions. I will see if I can try a
newer version of Bazaar (although I'd be much happier to do so if a
simple "unzip and go" Windows binary was available).

Paul.