Walking through the bazaar

Having minimally used CVS ages ago(2 yrs may be), and with very little traces of `version control systems concept` left in my minimal mind, I sheepishly logged in to my launchpad account.

I had to commit the license file for project timepass into its development repository.

Launchpad uses bazaar as version system for hosted projects.
Bazaar is a distributed revision control system sponsored by Canonical Ltd., designed to make it easier for anyone to contribute to open source software projects.
It is written in the Python, with packages for major Linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows. It is released under the GNU General Public License and is free software.

CVS and SVN are other famous version control systems. I guess I’ve fallen in love with bazaar for now.

I had to read documentation, how-to’s, before I could push my file to the repository.
I am trying to trace back few steps and give a quick read column on accessing bazaar branches on launchpad.

1. Install bazaar on your operating system. (google on it) 🙂
For ubuntu/debian users, bzr package in your repositories.

2. Generate your ssh key.
ssh-keygen -t dsa

3. Introduce yourself to bazaar; ensures you are identified in revision logs.
krish@blackbeauty:~$ bzr whoami “Srikrishna Das <srikrishna.innovations@gmail.com>”

4. Check if bazaar knows you know.
krish@blackbeauty:~$ bzr whoami
Srikrishna Das <srikrishna.innovations@gmail.com>

5. Create directory for local copy, and files required for upload. (In this case, I need to upload license file for project timepass)
krish@blackbeauty:~$ mkdir -p /data/timepass/timepass-devel/license
krish@blackbeauty:~$ touch /data/timepass/timepass-devel/license/tplv1.txt
krish@blackbeauty:~$ cd /data/timepass/timepass-devel/

6. Tell bazaar about your local branch (run the following command in the project directory)
krish@blackbeauty:/data/timepass/timepass-devel$ bzr init

7. Tell bazaar that you want to add your files to the version system
krish@blackbeauty:/data/timepass/timepass-devel$ bzr add
added license
added license/tplv1.txt

8. Commit files to the branch, with revision message (this is still local, not the hosted launchpad branch)
krish@blackbeauty:/data/timepass/timepass-devel$ bzr commit -m “timepass license version1”

Now, its time to send the local branch files to project’s branch on launchpad.
A prerequisite for this is to update your ssh keys with launchpad; go to your launchpad account profile and select action update ssh keys. Follow the instructions there.

9. Publishing your branch with launchpad using
bzr push bzr+ssh://username@bazaar.launchpad.net/projectregistrant/project/projectbranch
krish@blackbeauty:/data/timepass/timepass-devel$ bzr push bzr+ssh://srikrishna@bazaar.launchpad.net/~timepass/timepass/timepass-devel

Congratulations, on committing your first file to bazaar. 🙂
For more reading on bazaar, see Bazaar in five minutes or Bazaar user guide.