Bazaar Explorer

Feedback for v0.8 on MS Windows

Asked by Greg

I have started using Bazaar Explorer seriously under MS Windows for a project and have these comments:

System:
MS Windows 7 64
Intel Q6600
4gb RAM
Bazaar Explorer 0.8
BZR v1.18.1

At present Bazaar Explorer (appears to me as) mostly a launch dialog for QBZR with file status listing.

Things I'd like to do:
1) See file status icons in the Working Tree view, similar to what TortoiseBZR shows in Windows Explorer.
2) Drag and drop files from Windows Explorer into Bazaar Explorer to Add, as this is the most common file operation.
3) Have context menus on the Working Tree view for Add, Delete, Ignore, Rename, History etc.
4) Multi select (or tag) files (and folders?) in Working Tree view to perform common file operations.
5) Toggle style filter the Working Tree view for Versioned, UnVersioned, All.
6) Show 'Recent' in the 'Open' view without having to Bookmark folders or locations.
7) Show some kind of 'busy' icon or animation when BZR or Bazaar Explorer refresh is occurring. While adding a few hundred files, Bazaar Explorer appeared frozen for several minutes but eventually completed the operation successfully.
9) Get rid of, or hide the command window that appears on startup.
10) Optionally minimize to task bar notification area.
11) Have Working Tree view remember its expand / collapse state per tree.
12) Have various settings remembered between usage including the main window size and position. (I think much of this will relate to QBZR) Constantly resizing windows, moving table columns, checking boxes is not fun.
13) Have 'What's next' show a 'Ignore' icon. It already has a Add and Delete, in fact it has lots of Add icons.

For...
Settings -> Ignores -> Working Tree Ignores
Settings -> Locations
Settings -> Credentials
...If the configuration file is not present, inform the user and ask them if they want the file created.
Any kind of help or documentation on these files syntax would be useful too.

The UI features I'm suggesting (if not obvious and already planned) are common to clients like Perforce P4Win and SmartSVN.

I am getting used to the interface but it does not seem 'standard' compared to common MS Windows interfaces or other Version Control clients. This is probably due to the 'Welcome' wizard style view and the 'Working Tree' not being the dominant interface for all file operations.

If the Working Tree view was fully functional, it would eliminate the need for many QBZR dialogs.

I hope this feedback is of some use.
Thank you, and keep up the fine work.

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Ian Clatworthy (ian-clatworthy) said : 		#1

Thanks for the feedback. As you point out, the initial focus for Explorer is scope coverage, i.e. highlighting the places where QBzr and bzr-gtk are missing dialogs and making it dirt simple to launch the dialogs already done. At a guess right now, 90% of Bazaar users use the command line and 10% use GUIs. I want to invert those numbers over the next 12 months and believe that coverage of core functionality is a requirement for that to happen. After 1.0, I hope to put more emphasis on the usability of Explorer itself. Some progress was made along those lines in 0.8, e.g. filtering the working tree to quickly find files of interest.

To skip the welcome page, start explorer with a path and that repository or branch will be opened instead.

With respect to the working tree enhancements, it was always the intention to provide a smarter working tree. It's never been the intention to make it the center of the UI though. (3), (4) and (5) are planned. (11) doesn't sound hard. (1) is possible but currently quite low on my list. It can lead to really nasty performance issues and, IMO, becomes less important if (5) is done properly.

(6) is likely, though I've been delaying it because I have some ideas re using a navigator instead of tabs that may make it redundant.

I like your idea about telling the user if a config file doesn't exist and giving better help on the syntax. The longer term direction here is for QBzr to provide smart dialogs. (13) is certainly planned.

The others I'll need to think about more. To ensure these don't fall off the radar, please raise wishlist bugs for any of the items I haven't explicitly said are planned.

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask Greg for more information if necessary.

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