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What is Bazaar?
Bazaar is a GNU version control system, sponsored by Canonical and used for keeping track of sources at code.launchpad.net. Most, or all Ubuntu sources exist as bzr branches.
bzr command cheat sheet
Get Ubuntu Source
There are some nice builtin functionalities in bzr. Getting Ubuntu source is one of them.
Get the source for a development release branch:
$ bzr branch ubuntu:<package>
For example:
$ bzr branch ubuntu:jackd2
Or, if you want the source for a specific release:
$ bzr branch ubuntu:<release>/<package>
For example (renaming the local branch to jackd2-precise):
$ bzr branch ubuntu:precise/jackd2 jackd2-precise
Get other misc source
Getting non Ubuntu branches will require you to get the adress to the source from launchpad, and branch it like:
$ bzr branch lp:~ubuntustudio-dev/ubuntustudio-default-settings/UbuntuStudio ubuntustudio-default-settings
Update branch
Before you start working, you might want to update your bzr branch. Do this only if it's a clean bzr branch with no uncommitted or unpushed changes. To pull latest changes from the default remote branch to this local branch, do:
$ bzr pull
You can additionally decide from where to pull with:
$ bzr pull <remote_adress>
bzr commits
Do not add several features and then commit them all at once. This makes it hard to oversee changes. However, making a feature change often means that you edit more than one file. So, it is the feature that should be commited, not each changed file by itself.
To make a commit, you would first make changes. To make new files commitable, you would first need to:
$ bzr add <yournewfile>
You'll seldom do it this way (since you're propably working on a debian package), but this is how to create a standard bzr commit:
$ bzr commit -m "a description of your commit"
If you're working on a Debian package, you'll first edit debian/changelog, and then use debcommit. debcommit reads debian/changelog and uses the descriptions of changes from there. Read more about documenting Debian changes
$ debcommit
bzr push
To "upload" your changes, you'll need to push them. This is done with the bzr push command. Without rights, you can't push to a Ubuntu branch directly. You can only push to bzr branches you own or have rights to push to. And bzr branches can either belong to a project, or be temporary personal "junk" branches.
To push to your own junk branch, make up a name for the branch when you push:
$ bzr push lp:~<your-lp-username>/+junk/<branchname>
Or, upload to an existing project branch for which you have rights, for example:
$ bzr push lp:~ubuntustudio-dev/ubuntustudio-default-settings/UbuntuStudio
Usually, when you're fixing a bug to an existing Ubuntu project branch, you'll create a paralell branch for it with the command:
$ bzr push lp:~<yourlpid>/ubuntu/<release>/<package>/<branchname>
So, for example, if it's a development release of jackd2, it would be something like:
$ bzr push lp:~zequence/ubuntu/jackd2/fix-for-956438
Or, for a specific release:
$ bzr push lp:~zequence/ubuntu/precise/jackd2/fix-for-956438
Arggh, I want to undo changes
Removing just the last commit, but not changing any files is done with:
$ bzr uncommit
Removing all changes in files that happened since last commit, is done with:
$ bzr revert