GNU Bazaar (formerly Bazaar-NG, command line tool bzr) is a

distributed Distribution may refer to: Mathematics *Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations *Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a varia ...

and client–server

revision control In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections o ...

system sponsored by

Canonical The adjective canonical is applied in many contexts to mean "according to the canon" the standard, rule or primary source that is accepted as authoritative for the body of knowledge or literature in that context. In mathematics, "canonical examp ...

. Bazaar can be used by a single developer working on multiple

branches A branch, sometimes called a ramus in botany, is a woody structural member connected to the central trunk of a tree (or sometimes a shrub). Large branches are known as boughs and small branches are known as twigs. The term ''twig'' usually r ...

of local content, or by teams collaborating across a network. Bazaar is written in the

Python programming language Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming p ...

, with packages for major

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

distributions, and Microsoft Windows. Bazaar is free software and part of the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborat ...

Features

Bazaar commands are similar to those found in CVS or Subversion. A new project can be started and maintained without a remote repository server by invoking bzr init in a directory which a person wishes to version.bzr man page
/ref> In contrast to purely distributed version control systems which do not use a central server, Bazaar supports working with or without a central server. It is possible to use both methods at the same time with the same project. The websites Launchpad and

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

provide free hosting service for projects managed with Bazaar. Bazaar has support for working with some other revision control systems. This allows users to branch from another system (such as Subversion), make local changes and commit them into a Bazaar branch, and then later merge them back into the other system. Read-only access is also available for

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

and

Mercurial Mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is supported on Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD, macOS, and Linux. Mercurial's major design goals include high performance and scalability, d ...

. Bazaar also allows for interoperation with many other systems (including CVS, Darcs,

Perforce Perforce, legally Perforce Software, Inc., is an American developer of software used for developing and running applications, including version control software, web-based repository management, developer collaboration, application lifecycle man ...

) by allowing one to import/export the history. Bazaar supports files with names from the complete

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

set. It also allows commit messages, committer names, etc. to be in Unicode.

History

Baz: an earlier Canonical version control system

The name "Bazaar" was originally used by a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with which one ...

of the GNU arch client ''tla''. This fork is called Baz to distinguish it from the current Bazaar software. Baz was announced in October 2004 by Canonical employee Robert Collins and maintained until 2005, when the project then called Bazaar-NG (the present Bazaar) was announced as Baz's successor. Baz is now unmaintained and Canonical declared it deprecated. The last release of Baz was version 1.4.3, released October 2005. A planned 1.5 release of Baz was abandoned in 2006.

Bazaar

In February 2005, Martin Pool, a developer who had previously described and reviewed a number of revision control systems in talks and in his weblog, announced that he had been hired by Canonical and tasked with "build nga distributed version-control system that open-source hackers will love to use." A public website and mailing list were established in March 2005 and the first numbered pre-release, 0.0.1, was released on 26 March 2005. Bazaar was conceived from the start as a different piece of software from both GNU arch and Baz. It has a different command set and is a completely different codebase and design. Bazaar was originally intended as a test-bed for features to be later integrated into Baz, but by mid-2005 many of the major Baz developers had begun working primarily on Bazaar directly and Baz was abandoned. Version 1.0 of Bazaar was released in December 2007. In February 2008, Bazaar became a GNU Project. In April 2012 Martin Pool left Canonical and the pace of development of the project slowed. According to Jelmer Vernooij the members of Canonical's Bazaar team were assigned to different tasks in early 2012 and he himself stepped down from contributing to Bazaar at the end of 2012, after 7 years of contributing to the project. In March 2013 a discussion on the

GNU Emacs GNU Emacs is a free software text editor. It was created by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project and a flagship project of ...

mailing list started about whether Bazaar is still effectively maintained and if Emacs should move to another version control system. In January 2014 Eric Raymond proposed and coordinated a transition of

from Bazaar to the

git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

version control system. This transition was completed in November 2014. Likewise, the

Bugzilla Bugzilla is a web-based general-purpose bug tracking system and testing tool originally developed and used by the Mozilla project, and licensed under the Mozilla Public License. Released as open-source software by Netscape Communications in 199 ...

project retired Bazaar in favor of git in March 2014 for multiple reasons, one of them being the impression that Bazaar was almost dead: "There are maybe 2-3 commits to trunk every month. The time to fix bugs in Bazaar also seems to be quite long, generally." Version 2.7.0 was released in February 2016.

Breezy

Bazaar was forked as Breezy in 2017 to allow backwards-incompatible changes to be made, such as migrating from Python 2 to Python 3 and dropping support for older versions of Windows.

Adoption

Source code hosting

The following websites provide free source code hosting for Bazaar repositories: * Launchpad * GNU Savannah *

(discontinued for new projects)

Projects using Bazaar

Prominent projects that have used Bazaar for version control include: * Armagetron Advanced * Beautiful Soup *

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bazaar Canonical (company) Distributed version control systems Free software programmed in Python Free version control software GNU Project software Python (programming language) software Version control systems