Six steps to using bzr

To collaborate more effectively on UbuntuStudio packages, it would be wise to push your packages to the bzr repository. Now, as long as in your package you specify a link to the .orig tarball, then all you need to push is your debian/ sub-directory, containing the package source. I will outline how to do this. You must have your SSH key published in Launchpad, but that is beyond the scope of this document.

1. cd to your package source directory

• For instance, I may run, cd ~/src/ubuntustudio/somalist.

2. Initialise the bzr repository.

• bzr init

3. Add the debian sub-directory to the repository.

• bzr add debian

4. I guess you would like to commit this change. This is the command to run when you want to commit any change.

• bzr commit -m "commit comment"

• Of course, I'm sure you want a different comment to 'commit comment'.

5. To see a diff between revisions, run

• bzr diff

• This is useful to run before every commit, to see what changes you have made.

6. Now push the repository out to Launchpad!

• bzr push sftp://<lp-name>@bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntustudio-dev/ubuntustudio/<branch-name>

  • lp-name is your Launchpad ID; i.e. mine would be tsmithe

  • branch-name is the name of the branch that you wish to create. We have decided that this should happen per package. So, in my example case, the branch-name is 'somalist'.

  • ubuntustudio is the product.

  • ~ubuntustudio-dev is the team whose branch we are developing on. If you wish to diverge from this, say, you can create a new branch under ~<lp-name> (e.g. ~tsmithe).

• In future, bzr remembers the location of the repository to push to for this local branch. You can then just run bzr push.

That's it! You've pushed your code out! Now you can do version control, revert mistakes, collaborate, or merge changes from another branch. Simple!

Remember, man bzr is a good reference.